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The Space Frontier Foundations annual conference is this weekend in Los Angeles. The keynote speaker this morning is Pete Worden and he is discussing commercial lunar opportunities. Some of his notional concepts are:

Government builds infrastructure well

The moon is a good place to do dangerous things

He asserts that there are two models for building lunar infrastructure: the use of private property to insentivize private companies to build it and the GPS model where the government just builds the entire thing.

Lunar infrastructure needs include:

Communications

Positioning, Navigation, Timing (PNT) (i.e. GPS)

Situational Awareness (maps)

Power systems

A first step is some established standards. The standards around navigation and weights and measures in the 17th century are a good example. (Ed. but there is an issue to be discussed around innovation vs standardization). He is currently suggesting that a good short term example is for all of the various proposed lunar probes should use the same comms standards (good luck getting the Chinese to agree on that one!).

The discussions now turns to private lunar activities that may not be exactly profit driven such as lunar observatories. He discusses a mercury liquid mirror telescope on the moon for very very deep field sky surveys.

Now he has moved on to using the moon as a place to do nanotech development in order to quarantine and asuage fears about gray goo scenarios.

Now he's discussing using the moon as a quarantine point for Mars exploration in order to ensure that either either Earth or Martian live doesn't contaminate and exterminate the other.

Heh. “Lunar Real Estate Prospectus”. He keeps mentioning the role of private property rights on the moon and is now discussing the areas on the moon that are valuable enough to warant the desire.

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Ever since NASA released the Exploration Systems Architecture Study there has been a semantic laziness among pundits in the community that confuses the Architecture with the Vision. Without going into specifics many habitually refer to the SDHLV, CEV and lunar return architectures as “The Vision” when they are only one suggestion by NASA for just one part of what the President articulated in his Vision for Space Exploration speech.

This confusion is potentially very dangerous for the community because it minimizes the importance of the other components of the Vision, indiscriminately lumps good programs in with the questionable ones, and creates a vacuum of clarity that causes the transition to a future administration/administrator a very dangerous time.

The Vision as articulated by the White House was rich with direction such as the use of in situ resource utilization, using the moon as a resources to build from, and the desire for cislunar infrastructure. But the President never said how those things were to be accomplished, just that they should be. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) outlined just one aspect of how NASA proposes to implement the transportation part of that Vision. It does not provide details on what might happen after 2020, alternate methods of implementing the Vision's goals using private industry, or any detail on what will be done on the moon or cislunar space to create infrastructure. Pundits who criticize the the Architecture but refer to it as “The Vision” run the risk of giving the reader the impression that they are against the entire Vision when in fact they may only be quibbling with using Shuttle derived technology or have issues with the reliance on HLVs.

In light of the desire for budget controls in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, Congress is possibly in the mood to cut budgets either now or in the future. If the space community is misunderstood by Congress to be against the Vision itself then Congress may not have any qualms about forcing the Architecture to be indiscriminately cut. Currently the Centennial Challenges program is part of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate which is the part of NASA in charge of the Architecture as well. If ESMD's budget is cut and money has to be moved around to support large contracts with the primes then that money will in all likelihood come from programs like Centennial Challenges. Ambiguous punditry that confuse the Vision with the Architecture now would most likely result in future cries of “That's not what we meant!”

In 2008 there will be a new President and possibly a change in the political party in control of the Whitehouse. As we have seen with the changes in NASA between O'Keefe and Griffin, the way NASA implements the Vision is greatly dependent on the Administrator. If the next President is intent on wiping out all things Bush, including his NASA Administrator, and there is enough criticism of the Architecture to give them political cover, then all the work the community has done could be for naught. The usual response to this is that there is no alternative to the Vision so the next President and NASA Administrator will have to adopt it or else spend money on doing nothing. But as we've already seen with two Republican administrators the way the Vision is implemented can change radically. In essence the “alternative” to the vision IS the Architecture. And its that Architecture that changes with each administration and with each Administrator. We run the danger of letting our focus and criticism of the Architecture turn into the same “design by Congress” that doomed the Shuttle while the importance of the direction articulated in the Vision is left to wither and die.

The point of all this is a warning to pundits, myself included, to be clear about whether or not you are talking about the Architecture as articulated by NASA or the Vision as articulated by the President. They are not the same. We should all be very clear and vocal in our support for the Innovative Programs Office even as we may (or may not) support the various bits of hardware that NASA proposes to build. If you have a problem with Shuttle derived heavy lift then say so. But don't call it part of the “VSE” because the Vision didn't say anything about using Shuttle derived hardware.

If we are unclear in our language about what we do or don't support then we give Congress and NASA the political cover to create something none of us want.

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As many of your know I am the VP for Business Development at Masten Space Systems. We decided to do a bit of marketing at the XPRIZE CUP EXPO this year by becoming a sponsor and having a booth where we could talk about our products and where we were in the development process. There is more about the company and the announcements we made on the MSS blog so I won't really go into that here. This is more about my personal observations and place to post links to pictures.

The Masten Space Systems booth

My overall impression is that it was very well run and was a very big success. I was impressed with everyone at the XPRIZE and with MC2 which was the show logistics company. I was particularly impressed by and grateful to Ian Murphy and Ryan Wilson, the two main PR guys with the XPRIZE CUP organization. They helped us out where they could and probably sacrificed a few years off of their lifespan due to the stress and general insanity of trying to manage the press at such an event.

I was also impressed with Mike Kelly's ability to manage launch operations. Between the weather, regulatory turf wars, safety issues and the inevitable delays inherent in making a rocket perform on cue, Mike was able to keep the show relatively on schedule and safe.

John Carmack at the Saturday Flight Ops meeting

An arial shot of the same meeting

Everyone else at the show was amazing and did their absolute best to make everything work. I especially wanted to thank Audrey Weedon with XPRIZE and Anne Phillips with MC2. The help with the logistics was greatly appreciated.

This being the first time a show like this has ever been held there were may learning experiences to go around. Most of them are minor and I list them here simply to get them out there.

1) Traffic flow. The flow of people at shows like this is a black voodoo art and something that usually is solved through simple trial and error. It was also limited by available space and safety issues. I think it can be improved upon. I'm also not sure the segregation of participants from everyone else helped since it seemed to confuse the attendees about where everything was supposed to happen.

2) Participants vs Sponsors vs Exhibitors. I think that once we get into the real competitions and get beyond trying to shove everything into a single day there should be a way for up and coming competitors to be showcased separately from other Sponsors in order to give them the extra boost needed to eventually become a full Participant. I'm sure developing the criteria for that will be difficult but it will be needed anyway.

3) Weather contingencies. That wind was murderous. I hope someone does an analysis of historical weather patterns in Las Cruces so we can find out if that weekend is truly the best time for that event. Everyone in New Mexico said this wasn't normal but I sure hope someone makes sure that's the case. My face still feels like its been sand blasted off. And I swear that inflatable planet Earth had it in for me personally.

4) Viewing. With no viewing stands or clear lines of sight the regular attendee was hard pressed to see anything interesting. If it weren't for XCOR's EZ Rocket most wouldn't have seen anything. Showing it on the Jumbotron is good but the attendee is there to see it in person. Watching it on a Really Big TV is still watching it on TV. I'm sure the liability and costs associated with large reviewing stands would be an issue so I'm not sure if I have a solution to this one.

5) Regulatory issues. Without getting into specifics about why, someone really needs to get a handle on the aviation parts of the FAA and educate them about this event and why its different than other air shows. There might even be room for legislative changes but completely ignorant on what the politics of that might be. Maybe holding at the spaceport instead of a general aviation airport will help.

6) Sun screen, lip balm, and water. In large quantities. Lots of water. Did I mention that you need a lot of water?

If the entire goal of this event was to make everyone look forward to next year then it accomplished its goal. Stretching it out to several days and having competitions with several participants will make the event much more fun and productive. I plan on being there and I plan on winning!

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At Return to the Moon 2005 I ran a panel where entreprenurial companies or projects that weren't on the formal agenda could each have five minutes to outline who they were, what they were up to and if there was anything they needed from the audience. Each participant could then take 2 questions from the audience. By the end of the conference we had 17 presentations.

Now I'm going to be doing the same thing at the Space Frontier Foundation's Conference in Los Angeles on October 21st - 23rd. So, if you are a space entrepreneur, your company is doing the work it takes to be a real company, and you are not on the regular agenda, please drop me a note so I can schedule your 5 minute presentation. Unlike RTTM this one is not limited to lunar businesses. Anyone who is doing business in or with the space industry is encouraged to participate. Feel free to contact me at michael@rocketforge.org.

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I'm at Accelerating Change 2005 and will be live blogging as much of it as I can. Much of the conference is made up of ad hoc BOF groups so I'm not sure if I can capture much beyond what I'm directly involved in. The gist of the conference is how the rate of technological change is accelerating and how that rate itself will be accelerating due to specific force multipliers such as AI, nanotech, and life extension. More to come when the sessions startup:

John Smart, Founder and President of Acceleration Studies Foundation, is giving the introduction to the conference and a status of where the Foundation is at and where its going.

(grrr… my camera's flash has stopped working so I may not have pictures)

First up is Vernor Vinge:

“Exponential growth” is one of the simplest and most pervasive patterns in nature. Some of these patterns are “exponential growth with catastrophic collapse” and “Exponential growth with saturation”. Particular technologies have “exponential growth with saturation” but when considered in aggregate the base technology curve stays exponential.

If this continues for a few more decades we get to the “killer app” of exponential improvement in computational ability: The development of creativity and intellect that surpass present-day humans.

The question of the future isn't can we re-create human intellect, we can already do that in the form of new humans. The real question is when we create something that goes beyond it. This is a good point to declare a Singularity.

Vinge defines singularity as “a place where some regularity property is lost”. Or analogous to the physics terms connotation of “a place where the rules profoundly change”. A working definition is that while you could bring Mark Twain to today's time and pretty much explain the state of the world in an afternoon, you could not do the same thing with a goldfish. Its also been described as technical progress that is incomprehensibly complex and rapid.

What would it be like if the Singularity didn't happen?

Maybe Murphy's Law trumps Moore's Law: “The maximum possible effectiveness of a software system increases in direct proportion to the log of hte effectiveness (i.e. speed, bandwidth, memory .

Or maybe catastrophe intervenes. The more we learn about the cosmos, the more we learn how dangerous it is.

Vernor's conclusion: while the Technological Singularity is not at all a sure thing, it is the most likely non-catostrophic scenario on the horizon. Of course the Singularity itself could be catastrophic. What can we do to make the bad versions less likely?

What if: AI succeeds

What if: The internet itself attains unquestioned life and intelligence [ed: IMHO, not likely]

What if: Fine grained distributed systems are aggressively successful?

(or what happens when all of the embedded systems network and 'wake up')

What if: Intelligence Amplification occurs: as the radical endpoint of human/computer interface or as the outcome of bioscience research?

Soft takeoffs vs hard takeoffs:

Soft takeoff - the transition takes years, perhaps even with the exact begininning and end states a matter of debate

Hard takeoff: the transition takes place in a very short period of time, perhaps less than 100 hours and without obvious precursors. Hard takeoff is generally considered a bad thing due to its catastrophic nature. Vinge thinks that the best way to plan for a hard takeoff is by using Intelligence Amplification in order to ensure that humans can adapt with the phase shift instead of being subject to it. This even brings up the point that if you are amplifying your human intelligence at the same time as the rest of the technological rate change is happening you actually don't see a Singuarity happen. You ride it.

Questions: with our limited intelligence compared to things post Singularity, can we even tell if things start being much smarter than we are. Things such as corporations made up of AIs, etc….

Question: how can I make money on the takeoff: from the back of the room: "I'll sell you hard takeoff insurance”. Vinge: if its a soft takeoff then everyone will get rich off of it. You may be able to get rich by simply sitting on your couch.

Question: will the biology end up trumping the silicon for what that super intelligence post singularity state may be based on.

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Up next is Ray Kurzweil: Re: hard vs soft takeoff or “how to protect ourselves from pathologically strong AI” is probably one of the most important questions.

If you accept the power law aspects of all of the metrics of technological development then you probably have a very radical view of what the future may look like. But people in general have a very linear view of it as its happening. or “if you take any exponential curve and just look at a very small segment it looks like a straight line”.

He came to all of this trying to determine which startups would succeed and which ones wouldn't. The models they creates have actually held up but all predict a period at which the model falls apart. I.e. all the Excell cells show “#######”.

Right now he's showing several very historical models of technology development and the exponential nature of evolution and change. or “when you stand on the shoulders of giants you get really good at climbing giants”.

This slide is the 6 epochs of evolution: chemical, biological, Brains, Technology, Merger of technology and intelligence, The Universe Wakes Up.

This slide shows the same stacked S curves that Vernor showed. its not that a single technology is exponential, but the subsequence generations of technologies are.

(Hmm….. we're spending a lot of time on this stuff which should be common knowledge to this crowd.)

The point Ray is getting to is that the models suggest that the beginning of the phase shift will probably start in the next 20 years.

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This is a panel on the Prospects for AI. Panel members are Neil Jacobstein, Patrick Lincoln, Peter Norvig, and Bruno Olshausen. First up is Neil Jacobstein talking about the current state of AI and what's real and what isn't. In general the terms have changed though: In other words, if it works, then it isn't “AI”. AI has become a real aspect of IT in a much more incremental and 'stealth' way rather than the old hyped announcements of super-brain computers that can out think humans.

Now he's reviewing the knowledge, systems, business and cultural issues still to be solved. To many to blog well, though. He's covering stuff from the Semantic Web to nanotech and reverse brain engineering. So this is really a review instead of something really new.

Now Patrick Lincoln is reviewing why you need AI and a review of the various flavors of AI in increasing difficulty (i.e. SAT, Baysian filters, Byzantine fault tolerant systems, etc). “It is more interesting to explore ALL of the behaviors of an abstract system than SOME of the behaviors of a complete system”.

“What is the worlds most urgent and important problem?” Collectively getting better at solving urgent and important problems….

Next up is Peter Norvig from Google: his first slide is “AI in the middle”. AI as a mediating force between people. His point is that humans have actually done most of the work building the knowledge base that an AI needs to infer over, its just a matter of making it accessible and searchable (ala Google). A good example is statistical machine translation that uses human translations to build an AI engine that can take over once it has learned how to translate.

Next up is Bruno Olshausen on brain modelling and applying that to real world AI. He is starting a company called Numenta to commercialize it. Title slide is “Neuroscience and Future Prospects for Intelligent Systems”. He makes the point that much of what they're learning isn't from human brains. Jumping spiders for example don't have compound eyes and have a very advanced visual system that runs on 30,000 neurons. The current state of neuroscience is still limited to the point where they still don't know what kind of computing device a neuron actually is. Theoretical neuroscience is a combination of experimental psychology, neurobiology and math/computer science.

Its clear from all of the speakers that the old “top down” model of building AI systems has lost the fight. Especially since its gotten rather obvious that building large complex systems “top down” generally doesn't work. Its certainly not the way nature has learned to do it.

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E-Tickets Now Available for the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP in New Mexico

Personal Spaceflight EXPO – Sunday October 9, 2005 – 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM

The X PRIZE Foundation is pleased to announce that E-Tickets for the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP are now available for purchase from the official website www.xpcup.com. The event will take place Sunday October 9, 2005 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Las Cruces International Airport in southern New Mexico.

While only one emerging commercial space company was able to win the $10M Ansari X PRIZE, the Foundation firmly believes there are several companies that will soon create reusable launch vehicles of their own for use in the private sector. It is vital for any nascent industry to have an incubator and venue that will support and showcase their vehicles to the world, especially visionary investors and sponsors. The EXPO will be the worldÂ’s first space show at which the entire family can come and watch the next generation of space vehicles fly. They will see the vehicles up close, learn about the technology, build their own model rockets, operate robots, and even talk to astronauts.

For animated invitation please visit this link: http://www.xpcup.com/images/images_flash/anim_invite/XP_animInvite.html

About the X PRIZE CUP

Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE, The Foundation has partnered with the state of New Mexico to produce the X PRIZE CUP and assist in the development of the state’s Southwestern Regional Spaceport. On April 13, 2005, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declared October 4 – 9, 2005 as X PRIZE CUP Week in New Mexico and during this time, tens of thousands of people will come to the state to see racing take new heights. Beginning in 2006, the X PRIZE CUP will be a week-long series of space-related events, including educational, launch, and test-flight activities, as well as aircraft fly-ins and tributes to the history of the state's aerospace industry. The events begin this October with the Countdown to the X PRIZE CUP in Las Cruces International Airport and Alamogordo Space History Museum in Southern New Mexico. Full details can be found at www.xprize.org.

About New Mexico's Aerospace Industry

Clear skies, mild weather, world-renowned research labs, and a growing aerospace industry make New Mexico an ideal location for the next generation of aerospace entrepreneurs. According to Economy.com, New Mexico’s cost of doing business is among the 10 lowest of the 50 states—due largely to our competitive wages and low energy costs. At the same time, we offer the infrastructure that aerospace firms need with Albuquerque International Sunport, White Sands Missile Range, two Air Force bases, many community airports, and the construction of the new $10 million Southwest Regional Spaceport in Southern New Mexico. Full details can be found at www.goNM.biz.

About the XPRIZE FOUNDATION

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to enable radical breakthroughs in space and technology for the benefit of humanity. On October 4th, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, built and flew the worldÂ’s first private spacecraft to the edge of space to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. Because of the dramatic nature of the achievement, the X PRIZE Foundation is now widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through the use of competitions.For more information about the X PRIZE Foundation please visit www.xprize.org or telephone 310.587.3355.

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p. Postcards from the Future is a new “large format” epic mini from director Alan Chan that will be out sometime in the first quarter of 2006. The film will chronicle the life of an ordinary guy who's job is to build out the power grid for a lunar settlement. Here's Alan's synopsis of the film:

bq.

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p.

Sometime in the near future, humankind will set foot again on the Moon. As part of President Bush's new Vision for Space Exploration, they will build a permanent base on the moon, to test, research and invent new technologies for manned missions to Mars and beyond. The task will not be easy - there will be danger and hardships and broken lives, but these modern-day pioneers would have it no other way. Because for all the hardships that they must endure, they know that the Grand Vision extends beyond them - that they are but a small part of what makes man's future in the stars possible.

p. 'Postcards From The Future' attempts to share this epic undertaking with today's audience. We see the Grand Vision unfold over the course of two decades by following the life of one man - civilian electrical engineer Sean Everman. Entrusted with the task of helping to build out the power grid on the Moonbase, Sean occasionally sends “Video Postcards” and personal messages to his wife back on Earth, sharing with her the details, trials and tribulations of his jobs. Over the epic course of the story, these postcards from our possible future reveal in exquisite detail the grand adventure that we are about to embark on…

p. Postcards will be written and directed by Alan Chan, an industry visual effects veteran, whose feature film credits include Academy Award winning films such as Jim Cameron's “Titanic”, “Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers” and “Polar Express”.

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p. You may have seen Alan's previous work if you 've seen Brad Edwards' space elevator talk recently since Alan's team did the digital animation work. You can see examples of it in this months IEEE Spectrum article A Hoist to the Heavens.

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In Building a foundation for space settlement Sam Dinkin discusses space as 'charity' as a way of building up funds needed to build some of the lunar infrastructure and eventually build a lunar colony. As the former Chairman of the Board for the The Artemis Society I'd like to provide some insight into how this might be done and some of the pitfalls.

Much of Sam's article is spent describing the available amounts of charitable giving by US citizens. The problem with using that as a starting point is the same one that investors loath to hear: “The market for X is estimated at $12 billion, all we need is 1% of that and we will generate $120 million”. The problem is you have to deliver on those donations. People will put up with crap from products they purchase but charities are constantly having to prove that the majority of their donations are going directly to the intended outcome.

As I discovered with the Artemis Project, any endeavor like this has a huge “chicken and egg” problem: in order to receive those charitable donations you need to show significant and continuing progress, but in order to show that progress you need very large amounts of cash in hand to prime that pump. If you can start out with a large enough sum to create a perception that the effort actually does something then the donations will come in and you can continue that effort. But without it you are continually struggling with a credibility problem that you simply cannot overcome.

Other things I've learned:

• You can not rely on volunteer labor. You need professionals and paid contractors doing the labor. Volunteers are good for small projects and very distributed tasks but an all volunteer space program would never get a foot off the ground.
• You need to start small. The first ‘mission’ cannot be so hard that you will never get there. The Artemis Reference Mission set such a high expectation that it created both a giggle factor and almost guaranteed failure.
• Marketing must be directed outside the ‘typical’ community. Our community may be energized but we are generally not a wealthy crowd. At the earliest opportunity the marketing campaign must be as widely and as globally advertised as possible. There is more money available outside the US than inside it for something like this.
• It must be very visibly branded. People who will donate money to something like this will want that fact advertised very widely. That means swhag for them to boast that they were involved and media coverage of any missions so the donor gets a very public feedback loop.

Some reading this may think I'm calling the Artemis Project a failure. I actually don't think that. I think it has had some problems but these could be overcome with not to much work. It would need to be reorganized. The existing model of member companies donating revenue into a cash 'stockpile' that is run by a private 'parent' company (TLRC) with no visibility assumes a level of trust that simply doesn't exist. It also had little to no participation by anyone that had business experience. But the basic idea behind ASI is almost exactly what Sam is suggesting. Whether or not it can be fixed and used is a separate discussion.

But does any of the above discussion solve that chicken and egg problem? No. But here's something that might: NASA's schedule puts the first returning NASA employee on the moon in 2018 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launches in 2008. Its more than possible to beat NASA back to the moon in both cases. My suggestion is to create a foundation who's initial task is simply to put a small rover on the moon with a simple video camera. Yes its similar to several of Luna Corp's suggested missions but the main difference is timing. My contention is that after Burt's successes and NASA's recent problems with Shuttle the climate has changed sufficiently that donations toward a cheap mission could do the trick.

At RTTM Rex Ridenoure, CEO of Ecliptic, issued a challenge to beat NASA back as a way of ensuring that the policy and perception gains made with Burt's flight continue outward into cislunar space. I suggest we take up that challenge using a non-profit foundation along the lines of what Sam is suggesting. If you want to discuss the idea then throw some of your thoughts at the wiki page or join me on #space to discuss it.

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