Space Access '04 Trip Report

04/25/04 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

This was my first time at a Space Access meeting. I tried the grand conference tour last year but was only able to get to ISDC. I must say that the difference is significant. ISDC participants simply aren't in the thick of building businesses at the point that SA participants are. At this meeting the primary discussions were around regulations, insurance, updates on businesses plans, and actual flight hardware. Things that show that people are building real businesses for real markets with real risks and rewards.

But it also had its fair share of history and mythos. It has its curmudgeons, plenty of greybeards, and still some wild eyed dreamers. The similarities with my first IETF were downright spooky. I can easily correlate certain personalities and companies between the two communities. There is internal strife that disappears when presented with a common enemy. There are companies with practices that irk some others as the community tries to find a balance between enabling the industry to develop and succeed without directly enabling your own competition. Intellectual property regimes are starting to make some people nervous.

I was able to put names (and in some cases just email addresses) with faces. I was able to meet the heavy weights of the space policy blogosphere: Rand Simberg, Clark Lindsey, and Jeff Foust. All very nice guys. We were all lamenting the lack of network access. Jerry Pournelle is an excellent stand up comedian in addition to having been there for most of the history of non-traditional space access. Henry Spencer has forgotten more about orbital mechanics that I will ever know. Henry Vanderbilt and his cadre of volunteers held an excellent conference with an extremely reasonable price tag. About the only thing I'd change is making sure that the hotel offered wireless network access in the conference room.

The things that people were talking about at the meeting were XCor's new little igniter, the amazing progress that JP Aerospace has made (and how scary it would be if, like space elevators, really big balloons made rockets almost irrelevant). The poor guy from NASA's Office of Space Exploration was literally mobbed with people trying to tell him how to structure that program. You have to give that guy some considerable credit for presenting that program at this organization. Everyone agreed that Barbara Thompson is just a fun person to be around. XCor getting their license was the climax of the meeting and served to prove yet another data point along the trend line.

There was some discussion of holding more than one meeting per year since its becoming hard to fit a quickly evolving industry into a 3 day a year conference. The suggestion was to add an extra day to the Space Frontier Foundation's yearly conference (in October this year) and have it be dedicated to Space Access Society.

During the 'open mike' session on the last night (equivalent to an IETF open plenary) there was considerable discussion about how to get the under 25 crowd involved. To start planting the seed corn to use a vastly overused phrase. I had to say that I felt there really wasn't a problem. The number of startups being created by people in their late 20s and early 30s has quickly surpassed the number of companies run by the earlier generation. Those startups have the energy that will attract those kids. But more importantly, when people like XCor, Scaled and Space Adventures start showing consistent profits, the kids will show up. The same way they showed up in 1994 and created things like Google.

In addition to all of the above there were several developments that aren't public yet so check back over the coming months for updates.

So, I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. The money spent generated an excellent return. If you can make it to future meetings I highly recommend it.