Space Elevator Journal

The Right Way to Get to Space

Space Elevator Journal Covers Space Exploration 2007

Although this has been in the works for some time, I can only now reveal the exciting news that the Space Elevator Journal will be covering Space Exploration 2007, including the Second Biennial Space Elevator Workshop live and in person. The plan is to provide as much live coverage as time permits and record as much of the proceedings as possible and make it available in various forms afterwards.

Feedback from you, the reader, will help shape the coverage. Tell me what most interests you by clicking the 'Leave a Comment' link in the footer below.

I also need to know if people are interested in a CD or DVD with audio and video of the proceedings and PDF copies of the papers presented.

Your intrepid scribe also plans to get one-on-one interviews with as many of the space elevator pioneers present as time and scheduling will permit. I just won't sleep is all. :)

Many thanks to Phil Richter, President of conference hosts Space Engineering and Science Institute and Administrative Chair, Space Exploration 2007 for making this possible.

Labels: Space elevator, Space Exploration, Space Media

Music for the Space Elevator Ride

The space elevator entered the collective consciousness over 110 years ago through the mind of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and remained largely hidden behind the Iron Curtain until it entered pop culture in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise in 1979.

A portal to a new dimension of the shared mind opened up in mid-2006 with the release of Inquisitor Betrayer's CD Space Elevator four years after an electronics engineer with a synthesizer fixation (and closet alien) named Dale Kay, and multi-instrumentalist/keyboardist Wes Antczak started putting out symphonic electronica on their particular wavelength.

Along the way, the duo was augmented by a maiden named Lorraine who liked Dale's last name so much she took it as her own when they married.

Speaking to the Space Elevator Journal in their collective e-mail voice the band explains what attracted them to the space elevator as an album concept.

Dale and Wes are in harmony on the concept's genesis in the excitement of watching sci-fi influences from Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem and "favorite TV shows such as Star Trek, Space 1999, and later Babylon 5, and movies such as (of course) the Star Wars saga" become reality.

"Man's journey into space is at hand," adds Wes. "It's real, it's complex, it's frightening, It's also the greatest ride we can ever imagine. It's all of these things rolled up into one fantastic and unbelievably intense experience."

"The music goes beyond anything earthly and current – to connect with something so into the future," Lorraine explains. "I wasn’t actually in on selecting the concept. It was something decided before I joined the band. Both Dale and Wes are heavily into sci-fi [and] I too am a big sci-fi fan going back as far as the old Buck Rogers serials, Jules Verne books and the 'Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity' series of books (and no, I am not that old)."

Once the SE is built and the world is "busy with a mission other than self-destruction" Dale opines SE passengers (and listeners) will be able to "relax, sit back, enjoy the music. The ride is all about you now."

Offered a free ticket to space on the SE Wes would simply "go for a quick spin around the solar system and then probably come back home and get back to making more music."

Lorraine "would probably just give my free ride to someone else [because] I don’t even like to fly in an airplane" [but thinks] "it would work for Dale [because he] is an alien you know ... and lately I’ve been beginning to wonder about Wes. How else could [Dale] come up with all the stuff he puts in our music?"

"I would like to take a look around with my camera in hand," agrees Dale the newly-outed alien. "Maybe park up next to one of the new telescopes that would be in place by the time I could go for a ride. Hook my camera up and just take some pictures [and then]- home ... it's been a while since I been there."


Listen to samples here at Inquisitor Betrayer's web site or just Buy the Disc

--SEJ--

Labels: Space Culture, Space elevator, Space Media

NOVA: Space Elevator - Cheaper, Safer Than Rockets?

The NOVA scienceNOW segment on the space elevator that aired on Tuesday (January 9, 2007) is an excellent introductory explanation of what a space elevator is, carbon nanotubes, beamed power and the challenges involved in making it all come together.

My favourite quote was Neil de Grasse Tyson saying "A space Elevator can be cheaper and safer than rockets - giving routine access to the solar system."

See the 12-minute broadcast segment via:

QuickTime high | low RealVideo high | low Windows Media high | low

Liftport didn't get mentioned in the broadcast (even though Liftport Sysadmin Brian "Kilroy" Dunbar claims the elevator doors that close on Neil de Grasse Tyson in the intro are theirs) but they were well covered in a video extra as per this SpaceLF8R Journal post: Space Elevator Segment on NOVA scienceNOW (PBS)

Dr. Edwards made a brief appearance on the space elevator segment and provided answers for the Why Build IT? flash extra on the NOVA site. He is cited as being from something called Black Line Ascension. He did hint in an earlier comment on the SpaceLF8R Journal that something new was up. Stay tuned.

Labels: Space elevator, Space Media

Postcards from the Future

Clip from trailer for Postcards from the Future
Source: Mahalo Bay Films

US President George W. Bush is not the only one with visions of The Moon, Mars and Beyond. It's also the tagline of Alan Chan's upcoming 'future documentary', Postcards from the Future set in (and inspired by) the near-future Vision for Space Exploration era chronicling of the life of Sean Everman while he works on the new moonbase as a civilian electrical engineer building out the base's power grid, his days captured in a series of video postcards and personal messages he occasionally sends to his wife on Earth.

Director Alan Chan
Courtesy: Mahalo Bay Films

Chan adds directing Postcards to his earlier movie credits that include a stellar list of mainstream films (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Titanic and Polar Express) as well as the short about the space elevator discussed in an earlier Space Elevator Journal post (see: Proud Papa Portrays Progeny).

There's a short trailer available here (requires Quicktime) and synopsis (in PDF format) on the movie's site. The curiosity of film geeks may be whetted by the shot anatomy explaining the all-digital process.

Labels: Space Culture, Space elevator, Space Media