Fwd: [ssi_list] Space Manufacturing 14 Call for Papers, at Ames, Oct 30-31, 2010
Bryan Bishop
From: Bruce Mackenzie gm <BMa...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 10:43 AM
Subject: [ssi_list] Space Manufacturing 14 Call for Papers, at Ames, Oct 30-31, 2010
To: ssi_...@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Bruce Mackenzie gm <BMack...@alum.mit.edu>
The next SSI conference is being planned: Oct 30-31, 2010, near Ames.
Since many of us have our primary contact with SSI people through
this e-mail list, I thought someone should post it here.
I only heard about it due to complaints that most parents, and many
others living in a suburban area, don't want to leave home on Halloween.
-Bruce Mackenzie
- - - -
Space Manufacturing 14 Call for Papers
Posted on June 21, 2010 by admin
Space Manufacturing 14: Critical Technologies for Space Settlement
will be held at NASA Ames Conference Center in Mountain View, CA,
October 30 and 31, 2010.
Thirty five years ago, NASA Ames Research Center was the site of the
first large technical study of space settlement. We have made
significant progress since then, but with the prospect of low cost
space transportation in the near future, now is the time to
reinvigorate research and collaboration on the critical path
technologies needed for space industrialization and settlement. The
14th Space Studies Institute conference on Space Manufacturing
continues in the spirit of the Princeton Conferences initiated by
Prof. Gerard K O’Neill in 1974.
The Space Manufacturing and Space Settlement Conferences have always
given SSI great value. This conference is the only one solely
concerned with the science and engineering of humanity’s expansion
into the solar system. Its most important function is to bring
together the engineers, entrepreneurs and researchers who do the real
work. New space companies and new institutions have formed from
collaborations forged at earlier conferences. We hope that this and
future annual SSI conferences will be as fruitful.
The specific purpose of Space Manufacturing 14 is to identify and
recommend critical hardware research that can be conducted now by SSI,
NASA and other organizations.
To focus and facilitate discussion, all papers must conform to the
following baseline assumptions:
Must be focused on Research and Hardware Demonstrations; Legal Session
requests must be focused on Research and Scholarly Analysis.
Sessions and Preliminary Schedule are as follows:
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Session 1: Space Transportation Architecture
Session Chair: Gary C Hudson
9:30-11:00am
Session 2: Closed Environment Life Support Systems
Session Chair: Taber McCallum
11:00am – 12:30pm
Session 3: Robotics and Space Manufacturing
Session Chair: Professor William (Red) Whittaker
2-3:30pm
Session 4: Extraterrestrial Prospecting
Session Chair: Professor Michael F. A’Hearn
3:30-5pm
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Session 5: Engineering Materials from Non-Terrestrial Resources
Session Chair: Dr. Peter J. Schubert
9:30-11:00am
Session 6: Space Solar Power and Space Energy Systems
Session Chair: Dr. Philip K. Chapman
11:00am – 12:30pm
Session 7: International, Legal and Economic Considerations
Session Chair: James E. Dunstan, Esq.
2-3:30pm
Abstract submissions shall be:
No longer than 1000 words, and provide an outline of a presentation on
research and hardware demonstrations and scholarly analysis (for
legal) and a brief biography of the presenter (not to be counted as
part of the 1000 word limit).
Submitted on or before August 16, 2010 by email to Colette
Christiansen at abstra...@ssi.org, indicating for which session
the paper is proposed.
Selected abstracts will be based on compliance with the baseline
assumptions and likelihood to promote discussion during the sessions.
Authors of selected papers will be notified by August 23, 2010.
All papers: Authors retain copyright of their works. SSI will have non
exclusive publication rights for SSI; appearance release for video
archives; and presentation publication rights (non exclusive to SSI).
Final agenda expected to be published September 1, 2010.
Final Papers must be submitted within 14 days of the close of the
conference (November 14, 2010) and shall be between 5 and 10
(electronic) pages when published. Publication guidelines will be sent
to all invited and selected presenters.
For more information on abstracts, contact Colette Christiansen,
Conference Director, at the submission email address
(abstra...@ssi.org) or write to Space Manufacturing 14, Space
Studies Institute, 1434 Flightline Street, Mojave, CA 93501.
Session chairs and presenters will be comped for registration
(including lunch). Public registration for the conference will open in
July.
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Paul D. Fernhout
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Bruce Mackenzie gm <BMa...@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 10:43 AM
> Subject: [ssi_list] Space Manufacturing 14 Call for Papers, at Ames, Oct
> 30-31, 2010
> To: ssi_...@yahoogroups.com
>
I guess SSI gave me my big break, presenting this paper in 2001. :-)
"A Review of Licensing and Collaborative Development with Special Attention
to Design of Self-Replicating Space Habitat Systems"
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/KFReviewPaperForSSIConference2001.pdf
"One reason more cooperation on such a library hasn't happened to date is
that the various societies people support have (seemingly) very different
objectives. For example, numerous space-settlement related efforts (such as
SSI http://www.ssi.org/, the Mars Society http://www.marssociety.org, the
Living Universe Foundation http://www.luf.org, PERMANENT
http://www.permanent.com, and the Artemis Project http://www.asi.org) each
have a different approach towards space settlement. Since so many bright
people want similar things, the question arises of how we can work together
to help all of these projects develop. Rather than argue whether L5 or Mars
or the asteroids or the Moon or the rings of Saturn should be humankind's
first space settlement, we could be asking what is common between those
efforts so that that groundwork can be shared."
Can't say it was received that well. I think there was a patent attorney and
a real estate developer who spoke in the same session too, and their
presentations were much more readily understood as linking to contemporary
scarcity assumptions. The people who did the audio of that conference were
nice enough to make a tape for me; I wonder if I can find it somewhere and
put it up on the web?
While I'm certainly not the most dynamic speaker, free and open source was
also such a new concept then, that most people then just could not
understand anything about it. While I also tried to explain that to
individuals, unfortunately, I could not get the key people at SSI then to
see beyond the IMHO outdated approach of funding space habitats by first
becoming an electrical utility for solar power satellites. Maybe it was a
good idea when Gerry O'Neill proposed SPS in the 1970s, but it seems passed
by now given battery technology and compressed air storage etc, and given
ground-based solar, geothermal, and wind energy are all advancing in leaps
and bounds. I also had little success persuading people on that SSI mailing
list (I used to be on it), which seemed pretty much a congregation of those
who also believed in that plan of funding further development through
proprietary solar power satellites. I spent quite a bit of time and emotion
trying. Back around 2001 (and even earlier, since I did a poster paper on
this idea the year before), I had talked with Freeman Dyson and others about
revitalizing the SSI organization in an open manufacturing direction, but
because the key SSI supporters are so enmeshed in that idea (even now), it
seemed like a non-starter. SSI had tried a related idea called "Matrix"
before to consolidate space manufacturing information, but it had not gone
far because (I guess) it was a proprietary in approach and so did not
attract much attention or volunteerism and was just dropped.
I feel there were also aspects of trying to change course, given Gerry had
died, it might seem disloyal to change the approach from starting with solar
power satellites, as SSI wrestled with whether it was a monument to Gerry's
Earthly legacy or a monument to his amazing connection to the eternal
adaptive creative spirit that can shine through all of us.
I'm glad SSI is still hanging on though, and maybe eventually the
organization will move onto other approaches to creating space habitats,
just like I could speculate Gerry might have done had he lived longer.
Still, it has become clearer to me reading more of Gerry's writings that he
was a huge believer in capitalism, so that was his model for future
economics, and doing things differently might have been a bigger conceptual
leap than the thought of having capitalism (as opposed to a gift economy) in
space. :-)
That was the same thing I commented on about the Virgle April Fools joke.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"""
Look at Project Virgle and "An Open Source Planet":
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on the planet
(who have built their company with thousands of servers all running
GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other possibility but
seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of others
on another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity too
:-). And that jest came almost half a *century* after the "Triple
Revolution" letter of 1964 about the growing disconnect between effort and
productivity (or work and financial fitness):
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-ites may well take many
more *decades* to shake off that ideological discipline. I know it took me
decades (and I am still only part way there. :-) As with my mother, no doubt
Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of money relative to their
needs to survive or be independent scholars or effective agents of change.
Is it any wonder they probably think being financially obese is a *good*
thing, not an indication of either personal or societal pathology? :-(
"""
By coincidence, I just watched this this morning with my kid, with pictures
of Gerry (who I took an intro physics course from at Princeton):
"Island One - Settlements in Space "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e14LDWt-Q1k
I was saddened when a couple weeks ago I read that Roger O'Neill, Gerry
O'Neill's son, who I had talked with to back then and was into biotech, had
passed away at a relatively young age a couple years ago.
http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-05-23/news/17156353_1_skilled-gift-symmetry
"His family's frequent camping trips encouraged his innate fascination with
nature and his love of the outdoors. He enjoyed the rustic pleasures of
hiking, fishing, gardening, and tidepooling, and grew into a skilled biologist."
Here is something that joins biotech and space and which I wish both father
and son had lived to see happen in reality:
"Growing a Space Habitat from Lichen Composites"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4XFqyKx4BM
And where to do it? :-) From current news:
"Rosetta probe passes Asteroid Lutetia"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10587674.stm
Ignoring time and money issues, it would be a great conference to go to and
give an updated version of the 2001 paper on space habitats and open
licensing, reporting on the progress with open manufacturing community, and
making another call for cooperation. Too bad it is on the other coast from
me. The other conference was at Princeton, and I could drive there in part
instead of other reunions. For anyone on the open manufacturing list who
lives around California, maybe you could read the 2001 paper and create an
update for nine years later?
Ames does seem like a happening place. Whenever I look at the NASA jobs site
wistfully, Ames is always the place the most interesting ones are, although
the area seems unaffordable for a single income family (at least at a NASA
pay scale. :-) Ames, IA was much more affordable. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thomas Fledrich
there.
Paul, I see your paper was focusing mainly at the organizational
structure of different possible ways of cooperation, but you seem to
forget that there is more to actually building working hardware than
just making CAD drawings.
We still need the tools and raw materials to make it and places to
assemble and test it. In todays world it takes a lot of money to acquire
these resources. Most people won't be able to afford it individually and
unfortunately the amount of funds non-profit organizations have been
able to put together from membership fees and donations so far is way
less than what would be needed even to build just a simple orbital
vehicle, let alone space colonies.
I hope open source space will happen in the future, but the requirements
are clearly not met yet. The tasks to be done now in Open Manufacturing
are setting up a standardized database for blueprints and building
simple local hackerspaces that can be used for automated manufacturing
of relatively simple hardware. Even this requires quite some initial
investment and I hope it will evolve into something much bigger later
on, but let's just do one thing at a time :-)
Paul D. Fernhout
> Paul, I see your paper was focusing mainly at the organizational
> structure of different possible ways of cooperation, but you seem to
> forget that there is more to actually building working hardware than
> just making CAD drawings.
> We still need the tools and raw materials to make it and places to
> assemble and test it. In todays world it takes a lot of money to acquire
> these resources. Most people won't be able to afford it individually and
> unfortunately the amount of funds non-profit organizations have been
> able to put together from membership fees and donations so far is way
> less than what would be needed even to build just a simple orbital
> vehicle, let alone space colonies.
For reference (because I intend to forward this to the Virgle list):
http://ssi.org/2010/06/space-manufacturing-14-call-for-papers/
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/131832bb828b3677
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/KFReviewPaperForSSIConference2001.pdf
My theory is that more and more testing and refinement can be done in
simulation, as computers get faster and the basic science better understood.
If we can get a trillion person hours worth of effort together to build a
design for a seed for a self-replicating space habitat (that could duplicate
itself from sunlight and asteroidal ore) then I feel confident we could find
a billionaire (or government) to put up a billion dollars (even ten) for
launch cost and construction costs for a few real hardware missions.
So, design it and they will come. Where are the designs for such a seed that
unfolds into such a habitat?
What are the real bottlenecks to such a design?
See also my comment:
"Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space: Both CATS and DOGS are needed..."
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/f65a889ca9a6b2c1?pli=1
"So where is a key area of research that should be a priority among
NASA and Billionaires, but is not heavily pursued? The issue is what
to do in space once you have gotten there. Because if there is a
reason to be in space, then people and collectives will work to get
there. And the reality is, that right now, if we could get there,
there is nothing to do there short of look around and come back. And
if that were the case, Space would not deserve much more investment
than say tourism to Mt. Everest. The reality is that we don't know how
to support human life in space -- in large part because we have only
spent a pittance on thinking about that issue systematically compared
to the issues of CATS and Planetary Exploration. Frankly, while we
support human life on earth, we have very little meta-knowledge
formally about how to do even that. And, most of figuring out how to
support human life in space at a nuts and bolts level requires non-sexy
activities like sitting around and staring out the window,
talking, sending emails, building databases, building software tools,
building some small physical protoypes on tabletops and outdoors, and
just plain thinking (the hard stuff). This is all the preparation
needed for the spiritual voyage into the (physical) heavens. ..."
> I hope open source space will happen in the future, but the requirements
> are clearly not met yet. The tasks to be done now in Open Manufacturing
> are setting up a standardized database for blueprints and building
> simple local hackerspaces that can be used for automated manufacturing
> of relatively simple hardware. Even this requires quite some initial
> investment and I hope it will evolve into something much bigger later
> on, but let's just do one thing at a time :-)
Someone who is socially clever maybe can get Google to help with that? :-)
A starting point:
"SVG and the Indexing of Web Standards"
http://slashdot.org/story/10/07/10/2141224/SVG-and-the-Indexing-of-Web-Standards
"The world's most popular search engine company is a leading supporter of
open standards. It pours money and people into initiatives that promote,
assist, support and implement Web standards. As a core foundation of is
mission statement, all web assets should ideally be of a kind that it can
work with. Strange then, that the world's most popular search engine doesn't
index all of the current important Web standards formats. Doug Schepers of
W3C blogs about how Scalable Vector Graphics content is recognized and not
recognized by search engines, currently and historically."
Based on that logic, why should Google not pour, say, a billion dollars into
refining and promoting open standards for open manufacturing content
(manufacturing recipes), plus help move a lot of basic initial content into
that standard?
Just one first cut by me a decade ago, much fancier XML/RDF stuff exists now
(and probably also did then): :-)
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/prototype.htm
NIST SLIM, SKDB, Appropedia, etc. are all moving in that sort of direction...
http://www.nist.gov/mel/msid/dpg/slim.cfm
http://github.com/kanzure/skdb
http://www.appropedia.org/
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2