Leonard David on Space and BPP

Transcript

foreign I'm here with Leonard David from space.com and you're here as a journalist covering state 2006. so it's a pleasure to be able to interview you and get some of your thoughts on the conference okay well that's you know I come here pretty much every year for quite a few years now and you know it's a conglomeration of multiple conferences which is I'm interested in almost anything that goes up so it's it's good for me because it's got microgravity the space tourism to break through propulsion ideas to to also the status quo where NASA and some of the Department of energy folks are going are not going sure well that's really one of the things that makes this conference so unique is the diversity of ideas here yeah yeah that's a good there's not too many of these kind of conferences where you can come and it's pretty much free reign I mean I I pick up a lot of early warning signals from different people you know about trends that I will see reflected years from now and stop so that's for me it's you got to keep your ears open here but there are some flares that go off in different topics that I think you know if you're looking for stories you'll find them absolutely well what are some of the stories that you're working up for this conference uh well you know clearly from the status quo is NASA itself you know what what type type of ramifications or whatever it's a real word I don't know but you know whatever they're trying to Pawn off now and as vision of exploration and uh you know watching that uh going to the different sessions you get somewhat of a patchwork view of where NASA thinks it's going I I walk away pretty trouble because I don't think they have a clue yet but there's papers to be presented here and they'll they'll explain different things so you know we're watching NASA grovel and grapple with budgetary issues and the technology problems to get Moon Mars and Beyond sure more than just rhetoric yeah the funding cuts and I guess a lot of that's going towards the war effort you know against terrorism but everything yeah yeah and unfortunately that seems to cut across the Air Force and a lot of the defense contractors as well as NASA so yeah I mean that's it's you know again this this conference you can walk in here and pretty much get a pulse of how good or bad it is you know how well the patient's doing and you know a lot of the oxygen tanks are over there for some of the contractors and so uh you know it's it's good but you know you can also walk a lot of little futuristic things space settlements or colonization or Blue Sky Thinking yeah you know if everything goes the way people hope it does here's what the options are for the future so sure good stuff well what are some of your favorite topics to write about this area well yeah the NASA the NASA stuff you know what they're planning uh space tourism I cover quite a bit so I'm always interested in what the latest trends may be in in passenger travel uh some of the Breakthrough propulsion stuff is really fascinating if I could only got more than a c in physics you know but there's there's definitely some some new ideas there that are fascinating um I guess the other topic that's uh clear as power I mean that's one of the themes of this conference is power and propulsion you know nuclear power are we going to ever have it in the kinds of ways that some of these folks needed to pull off some of the larger missions so that's always and then faster Mission you know again we're in a Conestoga wagon mentality the way the space program is set up now it takes forever to do anything and go anywhere and that's all going to fall but it's painful to watch the tent poles you know collapse you know and get going on things so the again budget like you said budget yeah but you know there's some real good Trends in technology if allowed to uh mature you know just no way we're going to be flying in space the way we do today why why would that be sure sure well it was interesting to see that there must have been I don't know six to ten RTG contractors with radio isotope Power Systems so yeah yeah here they're typically always here even in the bad news good news days it seems like the Sterling cycle is also kind of making a debut I don't know how long it's been around for the concept itself goes way back right yeah yeah it's been talked about and Technology wise there's some demos and some spacecraft one spacecraft apparently has a sterling that's how I learned something today and there's a you know there are things happening but you know you get a little it's painful to come every year and watch the conniptions you know you know you'd like to have a time machine and and kind of save some registration fee and move up like 25 years and see how well everybody did but that's not going to happen so you kind of have to pay your dues and come here and suffer you know with all the the good news the bad news the media awareness the news is it ever going to show yeah yeah but you know bottom line is you know the spaces always got some surprises they have I'm sure the other to me the big kind of really interesting story is going back to the moon and and really seeing it for the first time I'm not sure we really saw it you mean in terms of the Romantic Vision clouding kind of the reality of it right I think the political pressure to get there and you know throwing the last guy on the moon was a scientist I mean I don't think we really got into the exploration of the Moon and my guess is the Moon's got some surprises I think we're going to find early Earth on the moon I think we're going to find some astrobiology potential if they don't know where the moon came from yet and there's still a disagreement it's weighted on one side more than the other but there still is open questions about where the moon came from yeah um so you know it's clearly it's in our face we don't know what that neighbor is like you know one of the things that was mentioned in the plenary session that really amazed me was and again it's something that we all probably know about we just don't think about was the dust on the moon which is down to the molecular size yeah razor and it gets in your suits and your you you break down and dust it not only in the moon but Mars is the big issue too you know if you're going to have humans traversing across Mars and people worried about the Dust not only the size of it and getting into your suit but also how toxic it is because if you got in and out habitats and people plumbering around on Mars you know you're going to be exposed to that stuff in some way oh sure so yeah the dust issues big and but you know they're piecemealing this thing out and we'll have robots go back to the Moon I'm just too old now I've seen you know I went to the moon so many times you know it's like okay I'm ready but uh you know Ranger and surveyor and lunar Arbiters and and then Apollo and here we are going to sort of re-revisit all that sure we'll get a lot more out of it I think because of the technology and it's change and also you know an open-ended question is at the polls you know with water ice and if it's a if it's a resource we can use that's there that does open up a whole nother potential for exploration absolutely well do you think that the focus on Heritage Technologies which I guess is much like the It Industries return to core competencies.com yeah but yeah do you think that may actually have some benefits to the contractors by allowing them to focus in on what they're really good at in terms of construction of Technology yeah so adopt to the technology to make new things happen we've got a we gotta learn how to incorporate those into missions and do Bolder things and and after 40 or 50 years I think we ought to be pretty Savvy on why things work and they're making them work and making sure they work so we'll see well one of the things I like to ask about is in terms of space.com itself what can you tell us about kind of the direction of the organization in terms of providing media coverage well you know I mean space.com started um you know growth curve and uh you know it Lou Dobbs was the originator of the idea along with Sally Ride and a couple other key people and the whole idea was to try to popularize space astronomy get people interested in Exploration sure and so uh you know and then the.com here uh did what it did and like all groups you know we had all kinds of missteps a little bit and people we should probably you know we had to let go and that kind of thing so it settled down but now it's been the last few years it's been growing again and really has done pretty well I mean multimedia wise that that was the goal and they bought software company they've uh we space news newspapers one arm of ours from a print publication the space.com is profitable people you know banner ads on there make a lot of money so you know it's improperable and also they just bought a Orion telescope so we have a hardware segment of our our agenda and there's some other stuff that you can't talk about but they're looking at numbers of other you know some interesting new things than developing yeah yeah you got to I think to keep you know on top of this internet wave that we're all benefiting from and exploring at the same time trying to figure out what the benefits are oh yeah you know because I tell you writing for the internet versus print magazine is is somewhat scary I mean you know it's instantaneous you're out there you know and you got to be careful you don't have your pants down on some of these stories you know you gotta you can get caught on not have enough time to get the details and but yet you're on internet time so you kind of have to move along oh sure sure yeah it's difficult too because a lot of the sources on the internet then sometimes The credibility kind of yeah you gotta tell you I mean I I I think we're all turning into like Central Intelligence agents you know it's every morning I'm sifting through hundreds and hundreds of emails from all over the world looking for Trends or themes or messages or you know our verification of things that I've heard or something so yeah you get into a real synthesis when you're writing now and stuff yeah well what do you think that it says about the space industry in general I guess from this conference at least that that while the the contractors in NASA seem to be having some some funding issues that the section F group The the Breakthrough physics group is expanding so rapidly yeah well you know it's it's expanding rapidly but I think it's within its own little confine there you're not sure uh you know how much peer review check that some of these people have because some of the stuff is so esoteric oh yeah at least that's a Terry today that's a good word that usually falters later on decades from now that well everybody knew that so yeah I I some of it's beyond me I can't but I if anything I'm good at I report or Instinct leads you down to sit in front of some people that you may not understand everything they're saying but what is something about this that rings a bell in the back of your mind you better watch this story absolutely watch this space and uh I think physics wise there there's so many things going on Way Beyond my ability to understand them but uh sometimes I look at the room and who's in there if I'm only the one sitting there listening to person then I'm at suspect but when there's a whole crowd of people taking notes I'm going well there's something to this story oh sure sure so you can tell by the body language of the room absolutely yeah well now one of the things that's sort of tentatively being discussed is the possibility of media attention do you think that that space.com might partner up with that in the future in terms of broadcasting from the conference or or from other conferences perhaps uh yeah there's potential for that we have uh you know part of our starry night activities as we film different conferences and actually integrate those into our platforms on DVDs for some of the software sales so yeah there's been some of that already where we've gone around and talked like you're doing interviewing people and and keep them uh you know I do think that's one of the issues that the public misses that maybe we have the advantage that we go to these conferences and actually see people yeah absolutely now most people watch a spacecraft take off and they can see the countdown and it's gone they have no idea what how much angst went in there by humans and troubles and trivia you know all the problems and funding shortfall and this and that and then that push the button on it and see it go it's a huge human story of success and sometimes failure it's pretty yeah I've seen I've seen both sides yeah I've seen some great failures I've seen some incredible successes well thanks again for your time again Leonard David from space.com and we look forward to more your stories in the future on so do I know