2020 Lunar Development Conference – July 19-20, 2020 – online

July 14, 2020 TopSpacer

2020 Lunar Development Conference is a two day all-virtual event sponsored by The Moon Society on July 19 – 20, 2020. It will feature prominent speakers, panels, and networking between attendees using a new virtual platform.

Registration for non-members is just $10.

Confirmed speakers include:

Michael Mealling – President, The Moon Society & General Partner, Starbridge Venture Capital
Sean Mahoney – CEO, Masten Space Systems to discuss their involvement with NASA’s CLPS program.
Dr. Doug Plata – President & Founder, Space Development Network
Ben Smith – Founder, Lunar Homestead – SPORE: Resource Extraction and Habitable Space Creation
James L. Burk – Vice President, The Moon Society & Senior Manager, Artic Consulting
Rick Tumlinson, co-founder of Space Frontier Foundation, New Worlds Institute, and SpaceFund
Emily Law, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – NASA’s Moon Trek
Philip Crume, Chairman, The Moon Society – Lunar Settlement: The Idea Whose Time Has Come
Sara Jennings, University of Colorado Boulder – The Next Generation of Lunar Rovers
Vincent Roux, Off Planet Research – Icy Moon: Origins, Nature, Challenge, and Promise
Melissa Roth, Off Planet Research – Lunar Regolith: Optimizing a Challenge
Elizabeth Kennick, Teachers in Space – Standardized Classroom Cubekits
Michelle Hanlon, For All Moonkind – Heritage and the Artemis Accords
Jim Plaxco, Chicago Society for Space Studies – The Sustainability of a Lunar Economy
Joel. C. Sercel, TransAstra Corporation – Lunar Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (LPMO)
Chris Richardson, WorldVistA – Bootstrapping Lunar Engineering
Pete Bonasso, TRACLabs – CASE: A HAL 9000 for a Lunar Outpost
Darel Preble, Space Solar Power Institute – Space Solar Power (SSP) and California’s Dying Power Grid

There will be a proceedings publication released by Luna City Press – publishing imprint for The Moon Society.

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Activism, Space Policy, SpaceCasts

The Space Show this week – July.13.2020

July 13, 2020 TopSpacer

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, July 13, 2020; 7 pm PDT (9 pm CDT, 10 pm EDT: No special programming.

2. Tuesday, July 14, 2020; 7 pm PDT (9 pm CDT, 10 pm EDT): We welcome back Dr. James Schwartz to discuss his new book, The Value of Science in Space Exploration [Amazon commission link], plus his ongoing essay series on space development.

3. Wednesday, July 15, 2020: Hotel Mars TBA pre-recorded. See upcoming show menu on the home page for program details.

4. Thursday, July 16, 2020; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): No special program today.

5. Friday, July 17, 2020; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 am-1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome back John Strickland on multiple topics and plans for space settlement and more.

6. Sunday, July 19, 2020; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): OPEN LINES. Come one com all. We want to hear from you.

Some recent shows:

** Sun. July.12.2020 – Dr. Alan Stern talked about “Pluto, New Horizons, Kuiper Belt and more”.

** Fri. July 10, 2020 – Dr. James A. Vedda and Dr. George Pollock talked about their paper, Cislunar Stewardship: Planning For Sustainability And International Cooperation , and there was “a wide ranging cislunar related discussion including multiple additional topics”.

]** Hotel Mars/John Batchelor Show – Wed. July.8.2020 – John Batchelor and David Livingston spoke with Anatoly Zak about “the Russian R&D program to develop heavy lift booster return, the Russian flyback booster concept that was panned, just where a booster might land upon returning, problems with the close proximity of China and more“.

** Tues. July.7.2020 – Robert Zimmerman talked about various space news items and policy developments.

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

The Space Show - David Livingston — The Space Show – David Livingston

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Activism, Roundup

Space policy roundup – July.13.2020

July 13, 2020 TopSpacer

A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest (find previous space policy roundups here):

International space

Webcasts:

** E23 – Defending the Space Enterprise in the Cyber Domain (w Lori Gordon, Ryan Speelman, and John Felker) – Aerospace Corporation: Center for Space Policy and Strategy

** Space Policy Edition: A Trillion-Dollar Space Economy? | The Planetary Society

Dr. Bhavya Lal joins the show to discuss the size of the space economy, where it’s going, and how the term itself can mean many different things to many different people. In a world filled with breathless claims about trillion-dollar economies, we dive down into the fundamental assumptions about space commerce, its potential for growth, and the pitfalls of motivated thinking in the hyper-optimistic space community.

** Keeping Space Green and Clean With Luc Riesbeck – Via Satellite

Luc Riesbeck is a space policy research analyst at Astroscale U.S., and wants to make our orbits a safer place.

Riesbeck started their career with an undergraduate degree in international relations, then interned at NASA, and quickly realized their interest in space policy. Now with a masters degree and a space policy internship under their belt, Riesbeck is eager to work alongside other industries to put space on the map for the “green” environmental movement.

In this episode, Riesbeck talks about the importance of space sustainability, keeping our orbits clean, and what space policy could look like in the years to come.

** Commercial spaceflight advocate outlines revolution in the field – SpaceFlight Insider

Night Sky Network members enjoyed a webinar on June 16, 2020 hosted by Bruce Pittman from NASA’s Space Portal Office, who shared the present, and future of commercial ventures in space. A quiet revolution has been taking place in the development of space over the last 20 years. Sparked by the space ambitions of men such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, these efforts will come into full display over the next 42 months starting with the launch of the NASA Commercial Crew Demo 2 mission by SpaceX now scheduled for May 27th and hopefully ending with Americans returning to the lunar surface for the first time in 50 years by December 2024. But this story is about more than just getting to space. We will also talk about the start of a space manufacturing revolution that is now beginning on the International Space Station. It has been said that the first trillionaire will be made in space, it may be one of the people that we will talk about.

About Bruce Pittman Bruce Pittman is the Director of Commercial Space Development at OffWorld Inc. and is currently working as a contractor in the Space Portal Office at the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley where he works as the Chief System Engineer. Bruce is a co-founder and Chief Space Officer for the not for profit Future Frontiers Institute. He is also the Senior Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of another non profit, the National Space Society.

** IN-SPACe & Space Reforms in India – Pragati Podcast

Space law expert Ranjana Kaul and space entrepreneur Narayan Prasad discuss space reforms and the recent Indian IN-SPACe announcement with host Pavan Srinath on Episode 144 of The Pragati Podcast.

** The Space Show – Sun. July.12.2020 – Dr. Alan Stern talked about “Pluto, New Horizons, Kuiper Belt and more”.

[ Update: ** The Space Show – Fri. July 10, 2020 – Dr. James A. Vedda and Dr. George Pollock talked about their paper, Cislunar Stewardship: Planning For Sustainability And International Cooperation , and there was “a wide ranging cislunar related discussion including multiple additional topics”.

]

** Hotel Mars/John Batchelor Show – Wed. July.8.2020 – John Batchelor and David Livingston spoke with Anatoly Zak about “the Russian R&D program to develop heavy lift booster return, the Russian flyback booster concept that was panned, just where a booster might land upon returning, problems with the close proximity of China and more“.

** The Space Show – Tues. July.7.2020 – Robert Zimmerman talked about various space news items and policy developments.

** July 10, 2020 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

** July 8, 2020 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast | Behind The Black

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=== The Art of C. Sergent Lindsey ===

“Tomato with Stem” by C. Sergent Lindsey on throw pillow. Available at Fine Art America.

Education, In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space

IGLUNA 2020: Student teams present “space habitat with remote ops” design studies

July 12, 2020 TopSpacer

The Swiss Space Center is sponsoring the IGLUNA program in which student teams compete to create technologies for extreme environments:

IGLUNA is aimed at supporting and accelerating the ESA_Lab@ initiative. The Swiss Space Center coordinates IGLUNA project and leads the main systems engineering activities, coaches the students teams, organises the events, and communicates to the general public.

IGLUNA is emulating European students and foster exchange through an international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative platform for demonstration of space technologies.

During the project, university students apply their knowledge to solve a technical challenge, to sustain life in an extreme environment, increasing in parallel the maturity of technologies relevant to the space domain.

During July 10-19, 15 international student teams are presenting their projects that dealt with the goal of developing “A space habitat with remote operations”. The presentations are in a online format called the Virtual Field Campaign:

The objectives of the campaign are to bring together the student projects, test them in an extreme environment, and present them to the other student teams, external experts and the general public.

Due to the Covid-19 crisis, the initially planned Field Campaign with an exhibition and control room at Verkehrshaus – Swiss Museum of Transport and a test bed on the top of Mount Pilatus in Lucerne will not be able to take place physically this summer. In spite of the current restrictions and as real space missions that have limited resources, we aim to do the best we can to ensure a proper project closure together with all involved partners.

Keeping the same dates 10-19 July, the Field Campaign will take place virtually, where all the student teams will connect from their countries to present their projects and hard work to the rest of the world. The project shows and additional space experts presentations will be live-streamed and publicly available.

The presentations can be viewed at Swiss Space Center – YouTube.

The team projects are described in this brochure: 15 international student teams will present their projects on the topic “A space habitat with remote operations” (pdf)

For example, the team P02 GrowBotHub

aims to do a fully automated system of growth and harvest of vegetables. To do so, a machine learning algorithm determines when the vegetables are ready to be collected, then a carousel brings the vegetables in front of a robot that picks-up the vegetables and replace them with a new seed so they can start growing again. All these actions and messages are controlled by a top-level controller. The vegetables are grown using an aeroponic system which allows to reduce water and energy consumption compared to other techniques.

IGLUNA team PO2-GrowBotHub designed a fully automated system of growth and harvest of vegetables

The GrowBotHub presentation is the second in this group of three given on July 10th:

P01 MELiSSA 11:56 Complete recycling system for space missions through the biological conversion of human urine for food and bio-based oxygen production thanks to a hydroponic growing unit and a photobioreactor. Melissa Foundation, Belgium

P02 GrowBotHub 1:27:03 Automated and autonomous structure to grow and harvest vegetables in a closed loop fashion in space. EPFL, Switzerland

P06 HYDRATION II 2:41:57 Heated drill system able to extract water from different surfaces such as ice, clay, sand and concrete in order to be used on Lunar ground. Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

The presentations during the coming week can be viewed live at Swiss Space Center – YouTube.

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=== The Art of C. Sergent Lindsey ===

“SpaceX Delivers the Goods” by C. Sergent Lindsey printed on phone cover. Available at Fine Art America.

In Space Infrastructure, Living in Space, Space Systems

Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – July.10.2020

July 10, 2020 TopSpacer

Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** Behind the Scenes in Space During Historic SpaceX DM-2 Launch and Docking

You saw history made with the first crewed launch and docking of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, but you didn’t see the flurry of activity on board the International Space Station…until now. Join Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy and his crewmates as they prepare their cameras to document the DM-2 launch, and look over their shoulders to witness the new American spacecraft dock to the station and deliver their new crewmates.

** Independence Day Message from Astronauts in Space

Astronauts Chris Cassidy, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken commemorate Independence Day in the United States. They explain the history of the American flag that was flown on the first and last space shuttle missions, which Doug and Bob will carry back to Earth when they return home aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft. For the latest on the International Space Station: www.nasa.gov/station

** Expedition 63 Inflight with New York Times, Fox News, and USA Today – July 7, 2020

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA and NASA Flight Engineers Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken discussed the progress of their mission on the orbital outpost during a series of in-flight interviews July 7 with the New York Times, Fox News and USA Today. Cassidy is in the midst of a six-and-a-half month mission on the station while Hurley and Behnken are in the second month of their mission following their launch May 30 aboard the SpaceX Dragon “Endeavour” spacecraft that resulted in the first commercial crew vehicle docking to the complex the following day.