Category Archives: Activism

The Space Show this week

The guests and topics for The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, Feb. 24, 2014, 2-3:30 PM PST (5-6:30 PM EST, 4-5:30 PM CST): We welcome back DR. MADHU THANGAVELU. Dr. Thangavelu will be telling us about his latest USC student team design projects for innovative space development.

2. Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014:, 7-8:30 PM PST (10-11:30 PM EST, 9-10:30 PM CST): We welcome back ALAN BOYLE of Cosmic Log and MSNBC to update us on space news and stories of interest.

3. Friday, Feb. 28, 2014, 9:30-11 AM PST (12:30-2 PM EST; 11:30 AM-1 PM CST): We welcome back STEPHEN MURPHEY do discuss his Do It Yourself Space Exploration (DIY), an organization dedicated to showcasing the “Do it yourself” space revolution.

4. Sunday, March 2, 2014, 12-1:30 PM PST (3-4:30 PM EST, 2-3:30 PM CST). We have a special program pending for this date but are waiting for final confirmation from one of the participants. More about this particular program later.

See also:
/– The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
/– The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
/– The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

Copenhagen Suborbitals: Co-founder Kristian von Bengtson leaving CS

The Copenhagen Suborbitals DIY rocket and space organization suffered a big blow this weekend when co-founder Kristian von Bengtson announced his resignation:

Von Bengston cited conflicts with the other co-founder, Peter Madsen, as making it untenable for him to stay. He was clearly a major source of ideas and energy for the group. (See his blog at Wired.)  It will be interesting to see if they can sustain their momentum without him as they try to continue the projects currently underway, including the launch of the big HEAT-2X rocket this summer, and towards their long term goal of a manned suborbital spaceflight.

Update: Here is a statement (somewhat garbled by the translator) from Peter Madsen: We must continue! – The Engineer (Google Translate).

National Space Society announces Robert A. Heinlein Award for Elon Musk

Congratulations to Elon Musk on winning the National Space Society Heinlein Award. (In 2011 Musk won the The Heinlein Prize, which is a separate honor given “for making practical contributions to the commercialization of space”.)

Elon Musk Wins National Space Society Robert A. Heinlein Award

Washington, DC — February 21, 2014: The National Space Society takes great pleasure in announcing that its 2014 Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award has been won by acclaimed space entrepreneur Elon Musk, the Chief Designer and CEO of SpaceX. In the last decade, SpaceX, under the leadership of Elon Musk, has been moving directly toward accomplishing goals that many of us in NSS think are of utmost importance, such as forcing a drastic reduction in launch costs by doing the very hard task which no one else in the world has been willing and able to tackle: working to create a family of commercially successful and reusable rocket boosters and reusable spacecraft.

The National Space Society’s prestigious Robert A Heinlein Memorial Award will be presented to Elon Musk at the 2014 International Space Development Conference (ISDC). The conference will be held at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles, CA. The ISDC will run from May 14-18, 2014.

The imaginations of our visionaries of the last 100 years will not be fulfilled until affordable, large scale and high mass operations can take place in Earth orbit and beyond. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is reusable and SpaceX is making great progress towards a reusable rocket, the key development that would make such operations possible.

About Elon Musk

Elon Musk

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971 and emigrated first to Canada and then to the US. He has two B.A. degrees, one in physics and one in economics, from the University of Pennsylvania. He became a multimillionaire in his late twenties when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers. He went on to more early successes, launching PayPal via a 2000 merger. He founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in 2002, the same year that he became an American citizen and also the same year he earned the money to fund the new company from the sale of PayPal. The SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately funded liquid fueled rocket to put a payload into orbit. The larger Falcon 9 rocket has been flying since June 2010 and SpaceX is also developing a reusable version called Falcon 9R and a much larger rocket, Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has a 1.6-billion dollar contract with NASA to supply the space station via its recoverable Dragon spacecraft. They are also a competitor in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. 

Like NSS, Musk views space exploration as important for the preservation and expansion of humankind. Musk likes to say that we should become “multi-planetary” as a hedge against all threats to our survival. He said, “Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond this green and blue ball—or go extinct.” To help make that happen, Musk’s goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100.

About the Robert A. Heinlein Award

The Heinlein award is presented once every two years for lifetime achievement in promoting the goal of a free, spacefaring civilization. The winner is determined by a vote of the NSS membership. The award consists of a miniature signal cannon, on a mahogany base with a black granite inlay and a brass plaque as shown. The award concept came from Robert Heinlein’s classic book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Previous winners include Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Dr. Carl Sagan. More information about this award is at: http://www.nss.org/awards/heinlein_award.html.

31 student teams to compete in Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge

The Mars Society gets a good response to their University Rover Challenge contest:

URC Registration Sets New Record with 31 Student Teams Set to Compete

The Mars Society is pleased to announce that 31 student teams from six countries and four continents have officially registered for the 2014 University Rover Challenge (URC), setting a new participation record for the annual international rover competition. Countries represented this year include the United States, India, Egypt, Poland, Canada and Bangladesh.

A sampling of some of the participating universities include: Cornell University, Warsaw University of Technology, Yale University, Cairo University, Częstochowa University of Technology, University of Michigan, Military Institute of Science & Technology and York University. To view the full list of schools involved in the URC, please click here.

Scheduled for May 29-31, 2014, the URC is the world’s premier robotics competition for college students.  Held annually in the desert of southern Utah, URC challenges student teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts exploring the Red Planet. Launched in 2006, the URC consistently draws an international field of the most talented and promising science, engineering and computer science students.

“In 2013, we shattered every previous URC milestone and had our winning team from Bialystok University of Technology score an almost unthinkable 493 points out of 500.  For 2014 our registered field has more than doubled over last year, and we are eager to welcome many new teams to the competition.  Everybody involved in the competition is getting excited. 2014 is going to be an incredible year for URC!”, said URC Director Kevin Sloan.

To view regular updates about the URC competition, please visit our web site or Facebook page.