The official newsletter of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)

 

Our mission statement:

"...ISEC promotes the development, construction and operation of a space elevator as a revolutionary and efficient way to space for all humanity..."

ISEC e-Newsletterwww.isec.org
April 2012
In This Issue
Space Elevator Conference moves to the Museum of Flight!
Changing the Schedule
Call for papers
ISEC.info -> ISEC.org
2nd annual European Space Elevator Challenge scheduled
4th annual JSETEC event scheduled
What is ISEC?
Our Corporate Sponsors
Visit ISEC on the Web
About ISEC
Quick Links
Letter from the President

 

We at ISEC have been, once again, very busy this past couple of months.  The biggest news we have to announce is that the annual Space Elevator Conference is now going to be held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.  The past several conferences were held at the Microsoft Conference Center and, even though we are moving the Museum of Flight, Microsoft continues to be a sponsor.  We are very grateful to the Microsoft Corporation and the Microsoft employees who continue to support the concept of a Space Elevator.

 

You can read more about this move later in this eNewsletter and, as always, the latest information about the Conference can be found at the Conference website.  

 

ISEC has now also changed up its schedule of events in order to align its activities with the Space Elevator conference.  This will allow us to do a better job with organizing our yearly Themes and the Artsutanov and Pearson Prize competition.

Internally, we are also finalizing the transition from ISEC.info to ISEC.org.

 

You can read about this and more in this eNewsletter.

 

As always, we encourage you to become a part of ISEC.  Our goal is to change the concept of a Space Elevator from science-fiction to science-fact.

Please join us and help make this most-magnificent of all engineering projects a reality

 

Ted Semon

 

President - ISEC
ISEC Banner Space Elevator Conference moves to the Museum of Flight!

ISEC is very proud to announce that this year's Space Elevator Conference, the first organized by ISEC, will be held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.  Conference dates are August 25-27.

The official Press Announcement:

For 2012, the Space Elevator Conference moves to The Museum of Flight!

The International Space Elevator Consortium is proud to announce that the 2012 Space Elevator Conference will now be held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.  The conference dates remain the same, August 25th through August 27th, 2012, with the Family Science Fest being held on August 25th.  Come experience learning, brainstorming, and working together surrounded by an atmosphere of invention and discovery!  Conference and family science fest attendees will be stimulated and energized by the planes hanging from the Great Gallery glass ceiling or watching a jet take off from the Boeing Field runway.  This will be a fantastic new venue for the conference!

3-Day Technical Conference
The theme of this year's technical conference is "Operating and Maintaining a Space Elevator".  There is still time to submit your abstracts and papers for the technical conference.  The abstract deadline has been extended to May 18th (the draft and final paper deadlines are still the same).  Abstracts and papers are coming in steadily and we want to be sure we have a great set of presentations for the technology, business, legal, and outreach sessions.

Family Science Fest
The Family Science Fest on Saturday, August 25th will also be held at the Museum of Flight.  This event is open to the public and is included in the Museum of Flight admission price.  The Family Science Fest includes Space Elevator 101 and 201 presentations, a youth robotics competition, exhibits from universities and science clubs, and much more.

Registration, Lodging, and More Info Coming Soon
More details of the conference technical program and the Family Science Fest will be posted on the conference website (http://spaceelevatorconference.org) in early May including registration, lodging, and other information as it becomes available.  Please note the the conference web site will be updated with a new look and feel the end of April.

The Space Elevator is one of the most magnificent Engineering projects ever conceived.  It promises abundant access to space and a multitude of benefits for humanity.  Come to the Conference and hear presentations and discussion with people working to make the Space Elevator a reality!

So, mark your calendars and make your reservations.  This Conference promises to be the most exciting ever!
ISEC Banner Changing the Schedule

In previous years, ISEC operated on a "January - December" schedule.  Late in the calendar year, we would decide on a theme for the next "ISEC Year" and announce it in January or February of the next calendar year - this would then drive most of our activities for that year.  While logical, this caused problems as it occasionally conflicted with the Space Elevator Conference and some of the activities associated with it.  For example, persons interested in submitting papers for the Artsutanov and/or Pearson prizes would then only have a few months to come up with a paper.

We're changing this up because ISEC has now taken ownership of the annual Space Elevator Conference.  Beginning in 2012, we're now going to use the Space Elevator Conference as our "Year-ending" and "Year-beginning" demarcation point.

Transitions are always tricky and this one is no exception.  Here is the new schedule:

Current Year (August, 2011 -> August, 2012)

Aug, 2012 - Space Elevator Conference
                 Release 2012 Journal
                 Present draft of 2012 ISEC Report

Next Year (August, 2012 -> August, 2013)

Aug, 2012 - Space Elevator Conference
                 Announce theme for 2013
                 Announce 2013 Artsutanov and Pearson Prize Competition

Dec, 2012 - Release 2012 ISEC Report

Jan, 2013 - Release 2013 ISEC Poster

Aug, 2013 - Space Elevator Conference
                 Release 2013 Journal
                 Present draft of 2013 ISEC Report
                 Announce winners for 2013 Artsutanov and Pearson prize   

Follow-on Year (August, 2013 -> August, 2014)

Aug, 2013 - Space Elevator Conference
                 Announce theme for 2014
                 Announce 2014 Artsutanov and Pearson Prize Competition

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this transition.
ISEC Banner Call for Papers

Both the 2012 Issue of the ISEC Journal, CLIMB, and the 2012 Space Elevator Conference, are now issuing a CALL FOR PAPERS.

If you would like to submit your Paper for consideration for one or both of these venues, the schedule is as follows:

For CLIMB:
  • June 1st - Paper Submission deadline
  • July 1st - Papers approved / rejected
  • July 15th - Authors sign off on final revisions
  • Aug 1st - Print copy ready for distribution
  • Aug 15th - ePub copy ready for distribution
For the Space Elevator Conference:
  • May 18th - Abstracts deadline
  • June 22nd - Draft Papers due
  • July 20th - Final papers due
  • August 17th - Presentations due
If you are an author and would like to submit a Paper for CLIMB, please send an email to climb [at] isec.org .  CLIMB encourages rigorous Papers, papers that will be peer-reviewed.  However, CLIMB may also, if conditions warrant, publish a non-peer-reviewed paper in exceptional circumstances. Please visit the  CLIMB webpage for more details.

And, if you are an author and would like to submit a presentation for the 2012 Space Elevator Conference, please visit the conference website for details on how and where to submit Abstracts and Papers.
ISEC Banner ISEC.info -> ISEC.org

When the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) was first formed, the only website available with the ISEC acronym was http://www.isec.info.  Much later on, http://www.isec.org became available and we snatched it up.  You can visit either URL and see the ISEC website, but our internal/external email addresses have always been isec.info, not isec.org.  This has been due to the vagaries of Google email and our own internal procrastination to 'bite the bullet' to favor one URL over the other.

We are now finally transitioning our email to the isec.org address.  These new email addresses are now active and the isec.info email addresses we have used in the past are being phased out.

So, the upshot of this all is this - if you want to contact ISEC or anyone in ISEC, you will need to start using the following email addresses:

Ted Semon - President and Director ([email protected])
Peter Swan - Vice-President and Director ([email protected])
Martin Lades - Secretary and Director ([email protected])
Skip Penny - Treasurer and Director ([email protected])
Ben Shelef - Director and Technical Pillar lead ([email protected])
Markus Klettner - Director ([email protected])
Bryan Laubscher - Director ([email protected])
Ben Jarrell - Legal Pillar lead ([email protected])
Matt Gjertsen - Public Relations Pillar lead ([email protected])
David Horn - Conferences Chairman ([email protected])
CLIMB - The Space Elevator Journal ([email protected])
Membership services ([email protected])
Customer Service ([email protected])

All other ISEC email addresses are going to be phased out in the next few weeks, so please, update your address books.  If you try to send an email to an isec.info email address after that time, you'll get a polite email informing you that the old addresses no longer work and that you have to use the new ones...
ISEC Banner 2nd annual European Space Elevator Challenge scheduled

Planning and organizing continue apace for the 2nd annual European Space Elevator Challenge.  From the Challenge website:

Your challenge: Build a climber, that - based on the concept of a real space elevator - drives autonomously, carries high payloads and manages its energy efficiently. The 2nd round in 2012 again offers newcomers and advanced participants the opportunity to participate in two levels.

This competition is scheduled for Oct 11-14, 2012.  More details can be found at the Challenge website.
ISEC Banner 4th annual Japan Space Elevator Technical and Engineering Competition (JSETEC) scheduled

Currently scheduled for August 1st, 2012, the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) will hold its fourth annual JSETEC event.  Each year, JSEA continues to raise the bar with the goal this year of having the Climbers ascend to 1,200 meters!

More information can be found on the JSETEC web page (it's in Japanese - if you can't read Japanese, use the Google Chrome browser to view & translate the page for you).
What is ISEC?

ISEC LogoThe International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) is the result of a coming-together of many leading figures and organizations who have worked long and hard over many years to promote the concept of a Space Elevator.  With organizational members in the United States, Europe and Japan and individual members from around the world, ISEC's goal is nothing less than to get a Space Elevator built.

Our Mission Statement says it all:

"ISEC promotes the development, construction and operation of a space elevator as a revolutionary and efficient way to space for all humanity"

Our plan of action is based on four pillars: Technology, Law, Business, and Outreach:

Each of the pillars is headed by a pillar lead, who functions much like a university's department head. Their job is to start initiatives (projects), pursue collaborations, guide project leads and prospective project leads in pursuing their individual projects, and generally increase the activity level of their pillar.

Each year we adopt a theme which we use to focus our activities for that year.  For 2010, our theme was Space Debris Mitigation - Space Elevator Survivability.  For 2011 our theme was Research and thought targeted towards the goal of a 30 MYuri tether.  And for this year, 2012, our theme is Operating and Maintaining a Space Elevator.

If you agree that building a Space Elevator should be a priority for all of us and you want to help make this happen, please Join Us !  Benefits include eNewsletters (such as this one), the ISEC Journal and other items listed on our Join page.

Come and join us and help make the future happen!
Our Corporate Sponsors

We at ISEC are very grateful for our Corporate Sponsors.  These companies have demonstrated their commitment to the idea of a Space Elevator in a very concrete way - with their membership dollars.  We would like to recognize these far-seeing companies here.

ISEC BannerThe Space Elevator Blog was founded in April, 2006, and was created to be an ongoing chronicle of everything that happens in the Space Elevator 'arena'.  It covers all of the news events relating to space elevator development and competition in the US, Japan and Europe as well as elsewhere in the world.  If you want to keep current on Space Elevator developments, you should be a regular reader or subscriber at the Space Elevator Blog. Contact Ted Semon at [email protected].

ISEC BannerSouthWest Analytic Network, Inc. provides consulting and educational services in the areas of major space systems' acquisition, space tethers, space elevators and policy issues.  Contact Dr. Peter Swan at [email protected].


Cholla Space Systems, based in Mesa, AZ, is a small business specializing in Space Systems, primarily Iridium. Contact Robert "Skip" Penny at [email protected]


Visit ISEC on the Web
  
Visit our website at www.isec.org.  There you can join learn more about what is happening in the Space Elevator community and what is being done to advance the concept of a Space Elevator.  Please consider joining ISEC - we foster research and sponsor Space Elevator-related causes, but to do so takes money.  Your contributions are crucial to our success.  Thank you!

If this newsletter has been forwarded to you, you can also sign up to be on our mailing list so you don't miss a thing!

The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) is a registered 501c3 charitable organization (EIN 80-0302896)