Dear Friend

The excitement of the ISEC sponsored Space Elevator Conference was catching. The audience interactions within the four mini-workshops [climber, operations, lunar elevator, & climber contests/experiments] and their discussions challenged the current thinking and moved the teams beyond today's concepts.  Some of the ideas were to use a "monkey climber approach" vs. wheels to connect with the tether; pure solar vs. pure laser to power climber; customer needs vs. size of tether capacity; and, the use of a strato-base as the Earth's terminus [balloons at 30+ kilometers] [maybe a platform for Red-Bull sky diving - oops almost vacuum diving].

The new slate of officers started their tenure with an exciting conference week and our new affiliation.  Next month's newsletter will have a major discussion of the new relationship with the National Space Society.  During the conference, the study report from 2013, "Space Elevator Concept of Operations," was distributed; while the 2014 study, "Space Elevator Tether Climbers," was discussed with significant inputs.  Attendees left the conference with a better understanding of where the space elevator project was and how they could contribute.  We look forward to the progress towards next year's conference where more ideas are challenged and more concepts put forth for discussions.
 
"Keep Climbing my Friends!"  Pete Swan

The Space Elevator Conference and Family Science Fest was another great success this year at the Seattle Museum of Flight, August 23-25.  Jerome Pearson gave the keynote address Friday morning and provided his valuable input during the workshops and technical presentations throughout the weekend.  We had many new attendees this year at the technical conference contributing a diverse set of new ideas.  This year's theme, Tether Climbers, yielded a great set of presentations on the engineering challenges for the climbers.  The workshops on tether climbers, lunar elevators, balloon experiments, and space elevator operations allowed everyone at the conference to provide their ideas and participate in the future of the space elevator.  The Saturday dinner banquet in the museum's Space Gallery was a great event to get to know one another and included 30-minute tours of the space shuttle full fuselage trainer.  
 
The Family Science Fest on Saturday was highlighted by ten teams competing in the youth robotics challenge sending their robots climbing up 25 ft ribbons to "place satellites in orbit."  Many local science, education, and engineering groups provided exhibits and displays throughout the museum including the Pacific Science Center and the Seattle chapter of the National Space Society (with whom ISEC is now affiliated).  The science fest was combined with another STEM event that same weekend put on by Honeywell, and they even donated prizes for our scavenger hunt.
 
The conference committee and volunteers are ready to get started on next year's conference.  We are now finalizing the technical conference proceedings from this year's conference and working on the dates for next year's conference and family science fest.  Many thanks go out to the Museum of Flight for providing such a wonderful venue for the conference.  We will be back!
 
David Horn
Conference Chair

To conform with ISEC Bylaws, ISEC Officers are elected to 4-year terms while Directors are elected to an initial 1-year term and then 3-year terms after that.

At the August ISEC Board Meeting, held the day before the recent conference, three Directorships were up for renewal, David Horn, Ben Shelef and Martin Lades.  David Horn and Martin Lades were both unanimously re-elected as Directors.  Ben Shelef, sadly, has resigned as an ISEC Director as he is devoting all of his time getting his new business up and running.  David and Martin will both serve three-year terms, through August of 2016.

Also at this meeting, a new slate of Officers was proposed and unanimously elected by the Board.  The new officers are:

• President - Peter Swan, Ph.D.
• Vice-President - Robert "Skip" Penny
• Secretary - Martin Lades, Ph.D.
• Treasurer - Ted Semon

These officers will serve until the next election date, August of 2017.