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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..." |
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| ISEC e-Newsletter | www.isec.org
| September 2012 |
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Letter from the President
The first Space Elevator Conference organized by ISEC has recently wrapped-up and we are very happy with the results. Many interesting and informative presentations were made, major progress was made on the ISEC and IAA Space Elevator studies, we saw a report on the recently completed Japanese Space Elevator Competition (JSETEC) and Michael Laine of LiftPort updated all of us on the new goings-on at "LiftPort 2.0" (more on this later in the Newsletter).
In addition, we were able to award a couple of Tablet computers (donated by the Leeward Space Foundation - thank you Leeward!) to conference attendees. We received both local and national news coverage (national coverage included an article in the current Scientific American online and The Economist) and finally, all of us were just blown away by the Conference's new venue, Seattle's Museum of Flight - it truly is a special place.
A preliminary issue of Volume 2 of the Space Elevator Journal, CLIMB, was distributed to all conference attendees who joined ISEC or renewed their membership at the Conference. The final print version should be ready for distribution sometime in October.
We're already making plans for the 2013 Conference. We are now beginning to publicize the 2013 Artsutanov and Pearson prizes and are hard at work looking for sponsors and competitors for the 2013 Strong Tether competition.
Stay tuned!
Ted Semon
President - ISEC |
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 Conference Wrap-up
The 2012 Space Elevator Conference held last month in Seattle, Washington at the Museum of Flight was a great success! Scientists, engineers, students, authors, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs from around the world joined together for the three-day technical program to present and discuss space elevator operations, the latest in carbon nanotube research, public outreach methods, and much more. The operations presentations, discussions, and feedback were great input for this year's ISEC report. The Museum of Flight as the new venue, provided a great backdrop for the conference. The Family Science Fest on Saturday featured Space Elevator 101 and 201 presentations to the public, physics exhibits from the Pacific Science Center, and the highlight event: the your robotics competitions. Teams competed in climbing 30 feet high vertical tethers in front of a large image of the Earth. It was dramatic to see robotic climbers ascend ribbons twice as high as last year's competition and deploy magnetic weights at the top of the ribbon. This month we begin the process of compiling the papers and presentations onto the proceedings DVDs which will then be sent to all conference attendees and be available through the ISEC web site. Next year we are excited for the 2013 theme of "Tether Climbers" and resuming the Strong Tether Challenge! We also recruited more volunteers at the conference to help the conference grow and be even better next year. If you would like to help out, contact David Horn at david.horn@isec.org. |
 What's New at LiftPort?
Hi folks!
For some of you that may not know me, my name is Michael Laine. I'm the President of LiftPort Group, and we've been involved with commercially developing Space Elevator technology for about a decade. We closed in 2007; restarting as a hobby in 2011. It's been a crazy three weeks: we built a new website, launched a Kickstarter campaign and participated in the International Space Elevator Conference! It's been amazing!
And LiftPort's Kickstarter effort has just 2 days left...
So what have we done in these three weeks? News articles about the conference, and our Kickstarter campaign have circulated the planet - over a dozen languages, and more countries than I can keep track of! LiftPort videos have been viewed ~150,000 times and we've earned 2400 backers and $74,000 dollars! So, yes, it 's been a great three weeks.
Behind the scenes, we officially re-incorporated LiftPort, and built a team that can carry us into the future. We're evaluating project management tools, parametric design software, expense and account tracking tools and various ways to asynchronously communicate with our community of hundreds of volunteers, researchers and advisers. We've made plans for our Robots+Balloon experiments for Tethered Towers; sourced (some of the) production for the reward levels. Through our forums, we've begun working with several volunteers on a variety of projects. (If you like what we're up to, please join.) We have a lot more volunteers to assign projects to! We named a robot, Neil... We've made appointments to work with a school district on our education kits, and begun the planning process for our upcoming video channel.
But we could still use your help! I've said over and over again throughout this campaign - that while everyone else was watching the first metric - money - that I was watching the second - backers!
Even though this campaign has vastly exceeded my original hopes, there are still a couple goals I'd like to reach: - 3000 backers! Currently, we sit at 2437. I think this is the key to building our dreamed-of Elevators.
- $80,000! We're at $74,063 right now. We originally asked for $8,000 - which we surpassed before the Conference was over!. It would be great to say our community supported 10x that.
- 1000 backers at the $8 "Card Carrying Supporter" level. - We're over 700 now!
Please, if you like what we're doing, and what we stand for - tell three people that you're backing this project. Tell them why you think it matters. Here's a link to the campaign: http://bit.ly/PIiqjR
Let's "unlock humanity from the tyranny of gravity" - together! Thank you!
Take care,
Mjl Michael J. Laine,
President, LiftPort Group
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 EUSPEC planning well under way The second annual European Space Elevator Challenge will be held this coming October 25-28 in Munich, Germany. From the Competition website: For the future of Space Elevator in Europe
The objectives of European Space Elevator Challenge are,
- to inspire young engineers and scientists - especially in Europe - about the Idea of the Space Elevator and to establish furthermore a bigger Space Elevator community in Europe
- to share experience, improve the understanding of the Space Elevator and finally make use of this knowledge in building the real Space Elevator
- to introduce the Space Elevator to a wider public.
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What is ISEC?
 The 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! |
| 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! |
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The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) is a registered 501c3 charitable organization (EIN 80-0302896) |
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