Editor’s Note

Dear Fellow Space Elevator enthusiast,

We have two new board members for the International Space Elevator Consortium! Welcome, Adrian Nixon and Dan Gleeson to the Board of Directors!

The ISDC conference is next week! It will be held in Arlington, VA, near Washington, D. C. The ISEC Webinar is the week after that. Then, we start ramping up for our annual Space Elevator Conference held mid-August in Seattle, WA. Before we can completely recover from that, it will be time for the International Astronautic Congress, also in Washington, D. C. All of these events, with links, are listed at the end of the newsletter, with more details of the first three contained in the body. Four major space elevator related events in five months!

While not Space Elevator related, did you know that the 50th Anniversary of the first moon walk is next month? The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation is hosting a multi-day event in Cocoa, FL. If you go, write to us and tell us about your experience!

For those of you who would rather surf the internet, an interesting article by Chris Edwards in Engineering And Technology called "Improbable Machines: Futuristic concepts in the Spirit of Da Vinci" talks about space elevators. We'd like to think that space elevators are probable, but he brings up some hurdles that we need to overcome, but we still feel that Space Elevators are closer than you think!

If you would like to follow us on Twitter, use this link! Please like us on Facebook and watch more videos on our YouTube channel. And please visit the Space Elevator home page for all things regarding ISEC for the latest information.

Thank you for your continued support of the International Space Elevator Consortium!

Sandee Schaeffer
Newsletter Editor

Save the date and time for the first ISEC webinar on space elevator topics!

Featured speakers include Jerome Pearson, co-inventor of the modern space elevator concept, Adrian Nixon, editor of the Nixene Journal on graphene development and applications, Pete Swan, president of ISEC and Michael Fitzgerald, chief architect for ISEC. The webinar will also feature a Q&A session for participants.

The webinar will be live beginning:

  • Friday, June 14th 16:00-20:00 Los Angeles (PDT)

  • Saturday, June 15th 00:00-04:00 London,

  • Saturday, June 15th 08:00-12:00 Tokyo

We'll do it again on

  • Saturday, June 15th 09:00-13:00 Los Angeles time

  • Saturday, June 15th 17:00-21:00 London

  • Sunday, June16th 01:00-05:00 Tokyo

Scheduled Topics:

  • Introduction and Welcome by Dennis Wright/John Knapman

  • Space Elevators 101 by Pete Swan

  • Space Elevator Materials with Focus on Graphene by Adrian Nixon

  • Tethers, Space Elevators and Debris by Jerome Pearson

  • Space Elevator Enterprise by Michael Fitzgerald

  • Q & A (questions from registrants selected ahead of time) by All

  • Close and invitation to join ISEC by Dennis Wright/John Knapman

Registration for the webinar is free.  Look for sign-up details at www.isec.org this week!  

Any questions? Please send to: info@isec.org

ISEC Expands its Board of Directors

Currently, we have eight members of the ISEC Board of Directors. They are:

  • Peter Swan (President - Paradise Valley, Az)

  • Dennis Wright (VP & Membership - Menlo Park, Ca)

  • Sandee Schaeffer (Treasurer - Kent, Wa)

  • David Horn (Confernece Chair - Redmond, Wa)

  • Bryan Laubscher (CNT Materials - Olympia, Wa)

  • Michael Fitzgerald (Chief Architect - Palos Verdes, Ca)

  • John Knapman (Research - Chandlers Ford, England)

  • Martin Lades (European Rep. - Munich, Germany)

We are now pleased to welcome to our Board of Directors two new members. They are:

Adrian Nixon

Adrian Nixon

Adrian Nixon is currently with Nixor Limited and Nixene Journal. He is also a Chartered Chemist of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Advisory Board member of the National Graphene Association in the USA. He has been excited by this new material development and is working with the University of Manchester to initiate production concepts for industrial usage. This activity would take the new promising material from research into manufacturing within a few short years. His recent keynote presentation at the 2018 ISEC Space Elevator Conference, when talking about the new single crystal graphene production, ended with: "YES graphene tether material really is possible."

Dan Gleeson

Dan Gleeson

Dan Gleeson, Senior Software Engineer & Co-President - The Nerdery: Dan is past president of a consulting firm with expertise in programing and project-oriented tasking. He has been with many companies, specifically J.P.Morgan Chase, while now with the Nerdery, a software consulting firm. He has been interested in space from the early Apollo broadcasts with a Astronautical Engineering program at Univ of Illinois under his belt. He loves to work in the space arena and has been working with ISEC on our software simulation of the dynamics of a space elevator. This ties in with his lifelong passion for astronomy and planetary motion. With his expertise in software and simulations joined with his passion to work in space and help move humans off-planet, he will be working with us on a simulation that will provide answers to several critical questions.

President's Corner

Exciting times to be inside ISEC

I am glad to report this month that ISEC is a somewhat healthy, yet very vibrant and active organization. We would love to have more members with more people reading the e-newsletter; but, we ARE reaching many and hopefully influencing the future of the space elevator arena. As to the active part of our organization - amazing! We will be active in three conferences on the horizon [International Space Development Conference (National Space Society) June 6-9 in Washington DC; International Space Elevator Conference (ISEC) Aug 15-18 in Seattle; and, International Astronautical Congress (IAF/IAA/IISL) Oct 21-25 in Washington DC]. In each of these, we will be explaining and emphasizing our four dominant themes. They are:

  • Theme One: Space Elevators are closer than you think!

  • Theme Two: Galactic Harbour is a part of this global and interplanetary transportation infrastructure

  • Theme Three: Space Elevator development has achieved preliminary Technology Readiness Assessment and is ready to begin Engineering Validation

  • Theme Four: The magnitude of the Space Elevator Architecture demands that it be understood and supported by many.

Links provided at the end of this newsletter.
Pete Swan

Reserve your spot for the 2019 ISEC Space Elevator Conference

The International Space Elevator Consortium welcomes you to join us for the 2019 Space Elevator Conference to be held August 16th through August 18th, 2019 at the Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington with the Family Science Fest on Saturday, August 17th.

This year’s conference theme is “Outreach and Early Experimentation Support." The three-day technical conference will engage an international audience of scientists, engineers, educators, managers, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, and students in discussions of space elevator development including Technology, Business and Operations, Outreach, and Legal topics.  More details of this year’s technical conference program will be posted on the conference website (http://isec.org/sec) with registration open now!

The Family Science Fest portion of the conference will be held Saturday, August 17th. This event is in tandem with the technical conference and is included in the Museum of Flight admission price. The Family Science Fest includes a youth robotics competition, public Space Elevator 101 and 201 presentations, exhibits from universities, science organizations, and science clubs, and much more.  This is a great event for the whole family while you explore the Museum of Flight.

Many thanks to our annual “GEO” level sponsor, the Museum of Flight, for their generous ongoing support for this conference.

Contributed by:

David Horn
Conference Chair

2019 ISEC Space Elevator Conference Call for Papers!

The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) invites you to join us in Seattle, Washington, USA and contribute to the latest research, knowledge, stimulating discussions, and exchange of ideas on space elevators at the 2019 ISEC Space Elevator Conference - August 16-18, 2019.  The theme of this year's conference is “Outreach and Early Experimentation Support." Carbon nanotube, graphene, and strong materials research is also a very important topic that we continue to emphasize, and we encourage participation by materials science researchers on this exciting subject.  Authors are invited to submit titles and abstracts of proposed papers for the conference by May 19, 2019.

Topics

Topics for papers should fall into these categories.

1. Early Experimentation Support

2. Space elevator impact on the future and public outreach to societal institutions; government, media, unions, the educational system, etc.

3. Carbon nanotube, graphene, and other tensile strength research progress and other strong materials research relating to space elevators

4. Science, engineering, and technology topics relating to space elevators

5. Operations, maintenance, ROI, and other business and financial topics relating to space elevators

6. Treaties, laws, insurability, and other legal issues and topics relating to space elevators

Submit your abstracts and papers to the Conference Management Tool (CMT) at https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ISECSEC2019/.

Abstracts

Authors are invited to submit titles and abstracts by 19-May-2019. Abstracts must be in English, no more than 5000 words, should state the purpose, result, and conclusion of the proposed paper with supporting figures where appropriate. Authors will be notified of acceptance to submit a corresponding paper within 10 days of abstract submission. For all submittals, please include the title, authors and affiliations, mail address, e-mail, and phone number of the corresponding author.

Papers

Please use the ISEC Conference Papers Template for your paper. Papers must be in English with the first full draft for review due by 30-Jun-2019.  This is an informal checkpoint to make sure you are on track to have the paper ready for the conference. Final papers and presentations are due 09-Aug-2019 so that we can make them ready for conference attendees. PowerPoint or PDF formats are preferred for presentations.

Upcoming Important Dates:

Conference: August 16–18, 2019

Draft Papers Due: June 30, 2019

Final Papers and Presentations Due: August 09, 2019

Questions

Send your abstract, paper, and technical program inquiries to:

Conference Chair: David Horn (david.horn@isec.org)

ISEC at the ISDC

Just Next Week - 6-10 June Washington DC - ISEC directs a "Space Elevator Track" at the International Space Development Conference: We are leading the three-hour discussion of space elevators on 8 June (pm track) and will ensure that this session is not forgotten. During this time period many of our ISEC family will present their thoughts and concepts to the space community. It should be exciting as we will have in our Space Elevator Track:

An Inventor of the Space Elevator [Jerome Pearson]

The ISEC Chief Architect speaking of the future [Michael Fitzgerald]

An ASU student [James Torla] (and his teammates) explaining how to get to Mars in 77 days using the Apex Anchor release with 3 times the energy of rockets at the Sphere of Influence when departing the Earth.

ISEC's Tether Climber Engineer Lead discussing the problems and concepts for future tether climbers reaching GEO and beyond [Peter Robinson]

And, finally, there will be a panel with many members from a diverse set of  space backgrounds discussing "Space Elevator Interplanetary Mission Support through Collaboration by Many."

This year's space elevator track will not be the normal "this is a space elevator" session. This year's track will announce to the world that you can get to Mars much faster (in as little as 77 days), more often [with weekly departure schedules], much less expensively, and far more routinely with a "bus schedule" for delivery of mission support materials to Mars!

Here is the schedule for Space Elevator events at ISDC (International Space Development Conference) held by the NSS (National Space Society) June 6-9, 2019 in Arlington, VA.

Upcoming Space Elevator Related Events

National Space Societey (NSS)
International Space Development Conference (ISDC)
June 6-9, 2019
Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel, Arlington, VA, USA
https://isdc2019.nss.org/

International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)
Webinar
Friday June 14th and 15th
See https://www.isec.org for sign up and details

International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)
Space Elevator Conference (SEC)
August 16-18, 2019
Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA, USA
https://www.isec.org/sec/

International Astronautic Congress
October 21-25, 2019
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington D. C., USA
https://www.iac2019.org/