ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO -- Stunned by the ill-fated flight of space plane Columbia, scientists and engineers from government, industry, and academia have gathered here at the Space Technology & Applications International Forum (STAIF-2003), being held February 2-5.
High hopes remain for the future of space exploration. That's what the optimism fuel gauge still reads as experts discuss everything from nuclear reactor-fed rocketry, microgravity science to next generation boosters and space colonization.
Many of those attending the forum are gearing up for action, unabashedly applauding a White House go-ahead for NASA to rev up the Prometheus Project. This nuclear space power and propulsion work is key, say the experts, to make true the theme of STAIF-2003: "Expanding the Frontiers of Space."
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy are cosponsors of STAIF-2003.
NASA's renewed interest in space nuclear systems for its future mission needs is welcome news said Stanley Borowski of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio who is chairman of this year's 20th Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion at STAIF
Day trip to the Moon
Conference hallways are busy with chatter about both fission and fusion rockets.
As example, technologists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories see a window of opportunity to begin work, and in some case, reactivate old ideas of speeding up point-to-point space travel.
The wraps are being taken off one futuristic idea: A fission propulsion proposal to hurl humans far beyond the Moon and Mars, outward to Callisto, a moon of Jupiter.
Later this week, details of a shuttle-tended nuclear electric propulsion interplanetary transportation system are also to be reviewed. So too is a look at super-speedy nuclear thermal rocketry that would take all of 24 hours to reach the Moon.
Mind-stretching
STAIF-2003 is hosting the 1st symposium on space colonization.
"Space colonization is going to become meaningful to Earth because humankind is now at a stage in history where the resources of space can meet the needs of Earth," said Thomas Meyer, principal scientist at the Boulder Center for Science and Policy. He is co-chair of several sessions dedicated to future colonization of worlds beyond Earth.
"In my estimation, rather than a goal unto itself, space colonization is tied to helping resolve issues -- particularly energy needs -- here on our home planet," Meyer told SPACE.com.
Robert Cassanova, head of NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts, said that "mind-stretching" approaches are worthy of consideration, new ideas "that one day could enable the permanent habitation of planetary atmospheres and surfaces."
Similar in view is Eligar Sadeh, a space policy expert at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
"The critical variables for space colonization are the enabling technologies," Sadeh said. However, there's no leaving behind organizational, political, and legal aspects of space colonization, he added.
"The political aspects necessitate the fashioning of rationales that can move space colonization from the public agenda to actual policy formation," Sadeh said. "Since space is a commons, part of this will be the fashioning of legal arrangements that allow, in particular, for commercial activities in support of space colonization," he concluded.
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