‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars ’ – Oscar Wilde
A lthough it was hardly a gutter. My Symposium at the majestic Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs. The outdoor lights were dimmed, high-power telescopes had been set up, and we were looking at the rings of Saturn, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, and the craters of the moon. The Space Symposium is the world’s largest gathering of key international players in military, civilian, and commercial space exploration. Every April, the Space Foundation hosts four days of conferences, presentations, and panel discussions at The Broadmoor and provides a 45,000-square- foot exhibition pavilion for Symposium participants to spotlight their space goods and space services. This year, 218 industries and organizations displayed the latest in extraterrestrial genius to 14,000 attendees. The exhibits ranged from the miniature to the monumental. For example, at a molecular level the Fralock Corporation revealed polyimide adhesiveless laminate technology – invisible but vital. (It keeps your circuit boards from peeling apart in the temperature extremes of space.) On a larger scale, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin unveiled the BE-4, a new gigantic liquid-fuel rocket engine producing 550,000 pounds of thrust. (Which it might have done then 14-year-old son Cliff and I were at the Space Foundation’s 34th annual Space
and there if somebody had ignored the “no smoking” sign by its combustion-chamber nozzle.) And larger yet was the first public viewing of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s flight-tested Dream Chaser prototype lifting-body spaceplane. The Dream Chaser will be able to resupply the International Space Station with 11,000 pounds of provisions and fly back and land at your local airport. (“Lifting body” means the whole shape of the vehicle provides aerodynamic lift, and the result looks like an enormous, angry brick with wings.) More than 20 countries – some as big as China, some as small as Bermuda – sent official delegations to the Symposium. Speakers included the director general of the European Space Agency, the director general of Russia’s ROSCOSMOS State Corporation for Space Activities, the secretary general of China’s National Space Administration, the director general of Japan’s National Space Policy Secretariat, the president of the Canadian Space Agency, the director general of the Mexican Space Agency, the director general of Vietnam’s National Space Center, and the chairman of the Space Agency of the United Arab Emirates. Also... NASA’s then-acting administrator Robert Lightfoot Jr., National Reconnaissance Office Director Betty Sapp, U.S. Air Force Chief
By P.J. O’Rourke
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American Consequences 91
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