Race & Racism & Technology & Gender Issues & Science Posted by Oaktown Girl, 05 Jun 2007 08:31 pm

Seattle Does Dallas, or What I Learned at the International Space Development Conference of ‘07

By Seattle

I spent Memorial Day weekend at the International Space Development Conference in the Dallas area held by the National Space Society. I’ve never been to one of these space exploration advocate conferences before, but I get notifications of them - a hold over I think from subscribing to something or other in the dim past. I’ve contemplated attending before, but that’s spendy. So why did I go this year? Why clean out the savings account, accost the parents for funds and go to the flattest spot on the continent? My 15 year old son wants to be a space rocket/vehicle engineer, and recent events dictated that it was time to ease him into the realities of conferences and dressing up for dinner and all that grown up stuff. Not to mention opening his eyes to all the options out there in the field so that if he doesn’t end up as an engineer in the end, he won’t feel he’s failed so much as changed directions.

But never mind about him for now. Here’s what I learned:

1. The demographics of the National Space Society as represented at this conference was rather eye opening and could be summed up in the statement, “It’s been a rough 30 years for the hard space enthusiasts.” I counted 4 African Americans - one of whom, Edward McCullough, actually did a presentation I attended which was probably the most impressive of those I witnessed. Otherwise, looking around the huge main presentation room, I eyeballed the crowd as 99.9 percent Caucasian, with men outnumbering women by about 20 to 1. Grey and white hair by far predominated, and one younger member that I’d put in his 20’s actually came up to the mic and put the whole demographics issue on the table - in terms of ethnicity if not concerning the age issue. He said he’d been coming to the conferences for several years and they were always attended by a bunch of middle class white people and what was the NSS doing to attract a wider demographic? The answer was interesting in it’s phrasing. “We’ve seen when we do outreach that a certain demographic grabs their kids and drags them over to our table/display while members of other demographic groups walk by without a glance. We’re working on that.” He didn’t sound too convincing. It might be appropriate at this point to mention that the convention was in a large hotel in the rich suburb of Addison, TX north of Dallas….

2. There are a lot of people in the National Space Society irritated by NASA policy.

3. One of the best ways to get NASA’s attention is to get one of their very expensive Mars rovers stuck in a sand dune…on Mars.

4. Really smart people can pile up a big ‘ol artificial sand dune and figure out how to get a Mars rover unstuck from a sand dune.

5. We build with short term goals, and our rovers keep working past their expiration dates.

6. Boeing assigned a team to figure out how much time and resources it would take to build a dome over a crater on the moon 25 miles in diameter to house 10,000 people and then fill it with a nitrogen atmosphere. The answer was 15 years. The most difficult part of the equation was generating the nitrogen.

7. Most space exploration enthusiasts make presentations in one of two styles:

a) Unemotional (I’m an engineer and we don’t get taken seriously if we sound enthusiastic.)

b) Breathless fanatic.

8. Favorite remembered quote of the conference:

People always worry about oxygen on the moon. I’m a geologist - I can get oxygen out of rocks any time.

–Edward McCullough, chair of the AIAA technical committee from the Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, California.

9. Only an idiot would call space/the moon a ‘harsh environment’ in regards to raising children. The proper term is not ‘harsh’, it’s ‘lethal’. Once we’re clear that we’re not talking about the freaking Gobi Desert here, we can move forward.

10. The national space program has a difficult time defining the why of space exploration for those who aren’t already sold via science fiction or their own personal drive to explore and/or turn their backs on the current state of human affairs. ; ) My son says that there shouldn’t really be a question - it’s dangerous for us all to stay on the same ball of dirt when other balls of dirt are known to be flying around loose…. I simplify-my phrasing there.

11. Sit a good looking woman from UCLA studying lunar rocks next to my 15 year old son at a gala dinner and he CAN speak without stuttering and hold his own in a discussion. Go, boy, go!

12. Space engineers miss the days when members of the opposite sex thought it was cool to go to space.

13. It’s rather amusing if a bit puzzling listening to a psychologist present a paper in no way related to space exploration and try to slant it to the audience anyway.

14. Never get the key to the mini bar.

Trackbacks

  1. 1. ISDC News Wrap-up - Out of the Cradle

Responses to “Seattle Does Dallas, or What I Learned at the International Space Development Conference of ‘07”

  1. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:13 am 1. James Killus said …

    “People always worry about oxygen on the moon. I’m a geologist - I can get oxygen out of rocks any time.”

    Hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon are more difficult. I expect that the first few generations of lunar colonists (which, as it happens, I don’t expect to exist) would suck out and lose almost all the scant hydrogen that exists in the lunar regiolith.

    And if one were to do a costing study of how best to survive a terrestrial asteriod impact, wide dispersion (which we already have) and deep caverns would be cheaper than extraterrestrial colonies that probably wouldn’t survive without frequent resupply from Earth anyway.

    Robots do very well in space. It’s a shame that the robotics part of the future didn’t get the funding that the space colonization part did.

    “Science fiction has a lot to answer for.” — James Killus

  2. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:31 am 2. The Constructivist said …

    Seattle, was Kim Stanley Robinson there? Any interesting encounters with strangers?

  3. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:32 am 3. Seattle said …

    “It’s a shame that the robotics part of the future didn’t get the funding that the space colonization part did.”

    But the whole point of turning to robotics was that it was cheaper then sending up those pesky fragile humans with their multiple redundant support systems. Space exploration on a tight budget or none at all. That’s what we’ve got. What is the point of exploring space with only robotics? Gather data and say, “Hmmm. Interesting.”

  4. on 06 Jun 2007 at 8:35 am 4. Seattle said …

    LOL No, I didn’t see Kim Stanley Robinson, but his name and books were referred to during one of the Mars discussions. I was amused to see that Ben Bova lived up to his reputation and failed to show up at the panel discussion on Sunday morning that I attended specifically to at last view him in the flesh. I think I saw the back of Buzz Aldrin’s head…

  5. on 06 Jun 2007 at 3:00 pm 5. Oaktown Girl said …

    Don’t mean to gush, but you are a freakin’ great mom, thinking to do something like this that benefits both your son’s present and future development and well- being. And he is quite fortunate to were able to find the resources to be able to do so in this very creative way. I shudder to think how many parents would have just thought, “space camp!”

    I love this post because it gives me a peek into a world in which I am a total outsider, and of which I am totally ignorant, except as it relates to SDI and such, which James gives us an occasional peek at.

  6. on 06 Jun 2007 at 4:00 pm 6. Seattle said …

    Yes, well, I’d considered “space camp” too, but my son told me HE didn’t want to leave Earth…I did…so if anyone should go to space camp, it should be me. LOL

    Truthfully, in many ways I’m an outsider too, in that I haven’t followed and don’t follow all the developments obsessively. I remember sitting in an L-5 Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society
    meeting in Portland OR over 25 years ago, thinking, I don’t want to come to this year after year and hear “Are we there yet?” over and over. The kind of decision which is in part responsible for us not being there yet, I suppose.

  7. on 06 Jun 2007 at 4:17 pm 7. Seattle said …

    The first presentation that we attended on Saturday morning was about something I’d never heard of, a virtual world set up by NASA called SecondLife. We walked in a few minutes late and the speaker, Simon “Pete” Worden, director of NASA Ames Research Center, was talking to the crowd through his avatar on a pull down screen and I kept wondering where the damn speaker was…because the avatar’s mouth wasn’t really moving in a visible enough way for me to make the connection…. Then when I finally caught on (slow, but steady, that’s me) I had a hard time agreeing with the concept that participating as a civilian in a virtual representation of space exploration would be enough. The opportunities for scientific collaboration via this route also seemed limited by security concerns as well.

  8. on 06 Jun 2007 at 4:53 pm 8. Oaktown Girl said …

    Truthfully, in many ways I’m an outsider too

    Sure, but you went to this conference and are bringing back information to those of us who didn’t.

    so if anyone should go to space camp, it should be me. LOL

    I think the only thing that would interest me as far as “space camp” would be a chance to experience zero gravity. (You do get to do that at space camp, I would hope). It just seems like so much fun - but I wouldn’t open a bag of chips like Homer Simpson did, that’s for sure. I might, however, be interested in other hands-on research experiments, though. [Cue the “sex in space” thread hyjack. No, don’t. Just kidding.]

  9. on 06 Jun 2007 at 5:13 pm 9. Ken Murphy said …

    Hi Seattle!

    Thank you very much for your frank impressions. I was the guy in the big black hat that gave the unconvincing answer you referenced.

    I’m not trying to equivocate, but that was a public forum, and was being recorded. I had no intention of saying anything that could be used to portray me as a racist in any way. I believe in only one race, the Human Race, but I also believe in the huge multiplicity of human cultures that makes the mosaic of life so fascinating. That’s why I couched it in terms of ‘cultural demographics’, as that’s really the way I see it,and I draw hope from the knowledge that cultures can evolve and better their contributions to the human commonweal.

    So, having said that, let me put on my analyst hat and dive into the muck. As background, the host chapter of this year’s ISDC, NSS of North Texas, does 6+ public events throughout the year at a variety of venues, from museums to movie theatres to community centres. The audience size varies, but we’ll typically reach a thousand people a year. Not huge, but neither is our chapter. As a result of the diversity of the venues we see a lot of different demographics.

    As I noted, there is one cultural demographic where we consistently see the parents drag over their children and make them ask one or two questions. Personally I don’t think this necessarily represents an interest in space per se, but rather an inculcation in the children of a culture of questioning and learning (which I think is a Good Thing). I see this at the larger fairs (like Discovery Fest coming up) where they will stop at each table and repeat the same procedure.

    Then there’s the cultural demographic that will just keep cruising right on by. As I noted they’re a tough audience to hook. I didn’t want to take the panel speakers’ time with explanations, but one tool I use is an actual nickel-iron meteorite that I will let people hold in their hand. This works sometimes. Having free literature and coloring pages at our display also helps. But getting this particular demographic to the table to learn more is proving frustrating.

    One interesting thing that I’ve noted is that there is one particular demographic that actively encourages their children to pursue the skilled fields, such as engineering and science, and they really dig the technology. This is of course a natural part of the American experience - desiring a better future for one’s children so that they don’t have to do the kind of sucky work the parents do, but end up in a better field with less sucky work.

    Then of course there’s the average cultural demographic. Very white bread milquetoast, yet manifesting some very obvious subcltures. We get an average response overall from this group.

    I will note that the uniform demographic you saw at the conference represented a significant range of wealth, from very little to very much. So it wasn’t that uniform a cultural demographic.

    There are a number of reasons the conference was in Addison, one of which was a large number of restaurants/bars in immediate walking range (Restaurant Row). There were other reasons as well, like folks complaining about airport hotels every year,and getting a good contract. No intent other than for y’all to have a good, reasonably priced time here in the metroplex should be inferred.

    Once again, thank you for coming to the conference. I’m glad you and your son enjoyed it, and I hope you loaded up on the freebies and met some cool people.

    Ken
    Co-chair, 2007 ISDC

    P.S. - My personal drive is to create businesses and jobs for the future. Not terribly romantic, but something else that I think is a Good Thing.

    P.P.S. - KSR wasn’t there, but Bova was signing books on Saturday (I got four autographed).

    P.P.P.S. - Did you happen to get the name of the young lady from UCLA?… ;-)

  10. on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:22 am 10. christian h. said …

    Finally some time to comment… thank you so much for this post Seattle, and for your extensive comment, Ken. I don’t have a magic way to overcome the racial and gender disparities in technical fields (as a mathematician, let me say I wish I had), other than to say it takes patient and sustained effort, outreach specifically aimed at underrepresented groups (I am sure that works better than general outreach hoping underrepresented groups will drop by), support for members of underrepresented groups once they enter the field,…

    This is not to criticize the NSS - I know nothing about your organization, but it seems to be private, based on volunteer work, so I applaud any effort you make! The heavy lifting will have to be done by the professional organizations, NASA, universities (and at least in mathematics, I think progress is being made - painfully slow, but it’s there).

  11. on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:27 am 11. christian h. said …

    I also wanted to lay out my two cents on space exploration. Given the current spending priorities (war), I think we should concentrate on unmanned exploration, as cool as dreams of moon settlements and Mars landings are (and I like the thought of these things as much as any SciFi fan). I’d rather send an unmanned drone on a fools errand to the nearest identifiable earth-similar planet (didn’t they find a candidate recently), than 5 people to Mars.

  12. on 07 Jun 2007 at 6:34 am 12. Bill Benzon said …

    I spent the summer of 1981 with NASA, working on a study about upgrading their computing game to research-university level. That was a very interesting summer. What most stuck with me, however, was that NASA was demoralized at the time. The agency had been created to put a man on the moon. That had been done and was over. So now the shuttle program was the center of things. And Space Transportation, Inc. just wasn’t as romantic as going for the moon. Thus many of the best people had left or were leaving.

    Logistically, financially, man-in-space makes little sense. Robots are cheaper and can get the job done. But, you need humans up there to attract public interest.

    * * * * *

    BTW, Seattle, I don’t think Second Life is a specifically NASA virtual world. It’s a commercial site (I’m sure Google will get you there) and anyone can go there and hang out or set up shop. I’d guess that’s what NASA has done.

  13. on 07 Jun 2007 at 8:33 am 13. Seattle said …

    Man in the Black Hat-thanks for the elaboration on the demographic question. When I say it’s been a rough 30 years for the space exploration enthusiasts, I see the demographics as yet another aspect of the difficulties. Personally, I think humans do their best work when they’re inspired (or under pressure, but that’s another post). Sending humans to another planet is inspiring. When we aren’t inspired we end up obsessing over trivia like Paris Hilton’s 3rd day in prison and other inanities which dimish us all and brings out the cynicism that accompanies lack of inspiration. It’s not that there aren’t plenty of things to be inspired about on this planet but we’re mired down instead of lifted up by what seem to be intractable conflicts and states of human misery.

    Oh, and her name was Erin. Thank god she sat at our table, because we were all set to be a bunch of shy folk unable to manage sociable chatting before she showed up. : )

  14. on 07 Jun 2007 at 9:07 am 14. Seattle said …

    Christian-new extrasolar planets are being found at a pretty steady clip. A nice resource I found this morning is here:

    http://exoplanet.eu/newsArchive.php

  15. on 07 Jun 2007 at 2:20 pm 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    First let me join those in congratulating you on finding such a nice way to expose your son to an area of interest.

    I am conflicted, because, although I do agree that it is important to generate excitement about space exploration, and clearly the idea of possibly being in space yoursaelf drives a lot of that excitement, I am in agreement that our silicon and metals-based machines are much better at the off-Earth thing. I am pretty much in alignment with Chris Clarke’s views as expressed in this post last year. We are the problem here. We’ve only got one planet right now and we’re messing it up.
    More recently Chris addressed a newly found “earth-like” planet here.

    Second Life seems to be the most well-known “general purpose” virtual world, based on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft as well as Silverberg’s Snow Crash. I set up an account one day, but need more compute chops - it dragged -it is being used in some interesting ways, and I predict one or the other of them will become a”standard” Internet interface in the next 5-10 years.

  16. on 07 Jun 2007 at 3:22 pm 16. Seattle said …

    I told a co-worker originally from Mexico that I was going to the conference and what it was about. He said humans are a plague and if we get off the planet, we’ll just become a galactic plague. Nobody hates humans like humans, it seems. I’d like to think that space exploration enthusiasts are the few people around who still hold a positive viewpoint about humans, believing we have the capability to become more than our worst traits as demonstrated by thousands of years of history. And part of that development is moving off the planet to explore other environments on other planets. It is conceivable that we can learn from the mistakes made here. Or we could all lay down in the muck and die. : )

  17. on 07 Jun 2007 at 3:55 pm 17. Oaktown Girl said …

    As little as I know about space research, I know that it provides a hell of a lot of valuable (invaluable?) information for us here on Earth that can help undo some of the environmental clusterfuck we humans have been perpetuating.

    My frustration comes with seeing how much money going toward “space research” is instead spent on militarizing space and other neocon, money-grubbing defense contractor, and political puppet wet dreams. And I know that’s a frustration many other people have as well.

  18. on 07 Jun 2007 at 4:30 pm 18. Seattle said …

    I think one of the saddest things I heard back in the 90’s was the day the first space shuttle blew up. I went into a language class taught by a Japanese woman and we were talking about the shuttle. Her response to the situation was, “Oh well, it was just doing something for the military anyway…” as if that negated the loss of life-not to mention the loss of the technology on the craft itself. Personally, I’d like there to be no connection between space and the military. But I’m just all kinds of an idealist.

  19. on 07 Jun 2007 at 7:17 pm 19. James Killus said …

    I do not buy the idea that we need to put humans into space to spark public interest. There are people in the Space Station. What is the relative amount of ink generated by that vs the Hubble photos and the recent findings of extra-terrestrial planets (even those ET planets that are guaranteed not to contain life)?

    But I have a question. Of all the talks, panels, info etc. to be had at the Space Development Conference, how much of it was devoted to the development of self-contained habitats?

    Because without those, the whole thing, including the entire Apollo program, is just a bunch of guys dressing up and playing space man.

  20. on 07 Jun 2007 at 8:25 pm 20. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle, thanks for sharing that story about the student in Japan. She’s not alone in her sentiment and her views of us, that’s for sure. And in her defense, it’s hard to muster up a lot of sympathy for the death of people you feel were working on ways to create many, many more deaths.

    He said humans are a plague and if we get off the planet, we’ll just become a galactic plague. Nobody hates humans like humans, it seems.

    Quite. And on the other hand, I’d hate to be locked in a room for any amount of time with one of those extreme “humans suck, animals rule” type of animal-lovers. Like this:

  21. on 08 Jun 2007 at 9:05 am 21. Seattle said …

    The schedule for the conference including speakers is here:

    http://isdc.nss.org/2007/program.html

    I believe we don’t know enough about any planet outside the solar system yet to be making statements like “they’re guaranteed not to contain life”. Statistically speaking, considering that our own little mundane sun has 9 planets and many more moons,consider the number of stars and the sky and do the math. And we’ve not even scratched the surface of locating other planets given the safe, cheap, human free method that we’re currently using to catalog them. Granted, measuring stellar wobbling with telescopes certainly keeps us all here where we belong. ; )

  22. on 08 Jun 2007 at 8:30 pm 22. Heresiarch said …

    If NASA’s mission is to gather data about the universe, then robot probes are the way to go.

    But if NASA’s mission is to do the basic research and lay the infrastructure that will attract commercial space developers–if we see the solar system as real estate waiting to be developed–then figuring out how people can live in space is essential.

    My biases are spelled out at
    http://www.starlarvae.org/Space_Brains_Space_Migration.html

  23. on 09 Jun 2007 at 11:04 am 23. JP Stormcrow said …

    I was probably a bit harsh in my assessment of humans in outer space, and I do appreciate the associated optimism. I guess I just wish some of that “optimistic energy” could be directed at the challenges facing us here on Earth. But after “background contemplating” this for several days, I must admit that even though I advocate this approach, I find very little positive enthusiasm in myself for that prospect. This is a problem. As a species I feel we need to find a way to generate some manner of positive energy for a future on this planet which does not involve continuing growth in the number of widgets per capita that are consumed. And right now I am not holding up my end of the bargain. There was a reason no one heeded Cassandra’s warnings - what fun is it to just get nagged?

  24. on 09 Jun 2007 at 1:46 pm 24. Heresiarch said …

    I see these things in an evolutionary context. I imagine fish have always had problems of some sort or other. Too many predatory sharks or too little nutritious food. If the fish had decided to try to fix these problems (which are just part of life) and turned their backs on the shoreline, (humor me) would that have been preferable to their use of resources to explore and eventually adapt as amphibians to the shoreline?

    Obviously we can’t trash the Earth, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves to it either.

  25. on 10 Jun 2007 at 8:02 pm 25. James Killus said …

    Seattle, I did not imply that all planets outside the solar system are guaranteed not to contain live. I was referring to the “Hot Jupiters” which have been discovered, several times the mass of Jupiter, but so close to their parent sun that they must be very hot gas balls, without surfaces or liquid water.

    The guarantee only applies to Life as We Know It, of course, but without that stipulation, the Earth could be also inhabited by pixies and angels made of dark matter and Big Bang neutrinos.

  26. on 11 Jun 2007 at 6:49 am 26. The Constructivist said …

    Great mash-up idea: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, in which, as spyder would say, the neo-feudal lords of capital are planning to leave the planet to the rest of us after they’ve sucked it dry, Douglas Adams’ preemptive parody of that plot in one of those Hitchhikers novels of his, and Independence Day (where of course the Aliens’R'Us)! Seriously, inviting people like Silko, Samuel Delany, Nalo Hopkinson, Jeff Tucker of the University of Rochester, and other members of “other cultural demographics” who write or write criticism of sf and are plugged in to the long-standing debates over human space exploration to keynote future conferences wouldn’t be a bad start at that concerted outreach strategy.

  27. on 29 Jun 2007 at 8:43 am 27. James said …

    1) I was that guy who asked the question about the basically all-male demographic. And I’m 18. This makes me feel old.

    2) I’m pretty sure that woman from UCLA almost broke up a few marriages over that weekend.

    3) Edward Mccullough did not have a cult following before that conference. He now does.

    4) Best line of the conference (IMO):
    “Well, there are multiple levels of catastrophic failure.”
    -John Carmack

    I believe I remember you at the conference. Did you have your son with you and he looked like he was bored to tears for the whole weekend?

  28. on 29 Jun 2007 at 11:27 am 28. Seattle said …

    So when you’re 18, aren’t you supposed to want to appear to strangers to be older than you are? ; )

    LOL
    My son is 15. Slumped and bored is the default look when you’re 15. Actually, I think he was just absorbing everything and when I asked him if he’d like to go to the conference next year in Washington DC, he quite enthusiastically said yes. Which means now I have to figure out a way to finance THAT. LOL

    Edward McCullough should have a cult following. I still don’t know why I can’t find him on the conference list of speakers.