sysRAND Corporation: Translating low-energy industrial processes to space

At its Centennial Airport laboratory near Denver, Colorado, sysRAND Corporation is designing an excavator to support NASA’s Lunar Outpost.

sysRAND is also developing and adapting low-energy industrial processes for manufacturing products on the moon for space use. This research and development company is creating technologies which can be licensed, sold or spun out as new ventures in the aerospace industry, among others.

“To commercialize space and make it less expensive, we need to find solutions to the transportation problem and identify ways to avoid launching everything that the missions and crews need to thrive in space. So we’re using logistics – beneficiation and manufacturing processes, energy and indigenous raw materials – to reduce the total amount of material which has to be launched to support space exploration.

“Our method is to launch factory modules which are assembled together to manufacture indigenous feedstocks and products on-site,” explained sysRAND CEO Gary “ROD” Rodriguez. “We’re developing the architecture that is pulling together a myriad of insular, point solutions. It’s a plan with a 30- to 50- year horizon; it’s comprehensive and over time it’s only going to get bigger.”

The 20-year-old company started out as a systems and technology consultancy, working with industry and oil patch and computer peripherals developers. Throughout the 90’s the company developed dozens of avionics projects for companies such as Rockwell Collins.  One project of note was a flight data recorder for the President’s Helicopter Fleet, “Marine One.”

Since 2004 sysRAND has been working in two principal R&D domains: one, foundational systems plus tools to support them, and two, adaptation and translation of low-energy industrial processes to space.  Rodriguez said that a third domain seems inevitable: the translation of reliable and low-complexity technology to energy-poor global markets to replace obsolescent, missing or inappropriate infrastructures.

“We knew it was smart business to anchor the company in the space industry and branch out from there,” Rodriguez said. “Our combined experience in industrial systems and avionics has resulted in a fusion which is advancing technology in both markets. By keeping one foot in the space arena we are able to develop foundation technologies which are novel to space and industry alike.”

For example, the company is currently developing software and methodologies for space applications which may also be applied to ships, buildings, and enterprises of many scales.

A bucket ladder excavator is being developed by sysRAND for NASA to use on the Moon and Mars. The sysRAND excavator is competing with several other designs, and the sysRAND design has the advantage of many other system enhancements such as “proximity sensing whiskers.” This technology will support surface operations at the Lunar Outpost which will provide radiation protection, landing pad preparation and other site features to enhance crew safety.  The Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Space Resources and 8^th Continent initiative are active research partners in Lunar mining and civil engineering work.

sysRAND has a constellation of closely-related technologies in development which will all converge in the space context in the near future.  These include making robotic auxiliaries on the moon autonomous, promoting the production and use of indigenous fiberglass, and development of a combustion synthesis fabric to stabilize Lunar Regolith (soil) in surface applications.

“The business of space is about versatility,” Rod said. “We are designing things now to be used on the moon that will later be used on Mars and Near-Earth-Objects (NEOs).”

DigitalGlobe and Microsoft to Launch New Clear30 Program: UltraCam3 Imagery to Collect First-Ever Multicontinental Aerial Imagery From 30-cm

DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), one of 8C’s founding sponsors, has been featured on this blog many times. And, for good reason. This Longmont, Colo.-based global provider of commercial high-resolution world-imagery products and services, has lots of news to tell. The most recent is its announcement last week that it has signed an exclusive agreement with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) to launch the Clear30 program, an initiative to distribute the first-ever high-resolution, 30-cm aerial imagery of contiguous landscapes, initially in the U.S. and Western Europe. These orthophoto mosaics will be available through Microsoft’s Bing Maps and through DigitalGlobe channels. Check out the specifics here.

The Clear30 initiative will use the UltraCamG, a large format digital aerial camera manufactured by Vexcel Imaging GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, which is based on Vexcel’s UltraCam large format camera systems, the top-selling large format aerial sensors internationally. The addition of large quantities of very high-resolution digital aerial imagery, which can now be collected quickly and published on a consistent schedule, Clear30 will further enhance both companies’ ability to distribute a comprehensive digitized globe to their customers. Imagery from the UltraCamG will further expand DigitalGlobe’s industry leading ImageLibrary and will complement the satellite imagery products available from the DigitalGlobe high-resolution satellite constellation, including the recently launched WorldView-2 satellite. Current collection areas for the UltraCamG program include the contiguous U.S. and Western Europe.

Congratulations to 8C Founding Sponsor DigitalGlobe

Just 11 days after its launch, DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2’s promise is paying off. The first high-resolution, eight-band, remote-sensing commercial satellite – remarkable in its ability to collect multispectral imagery at 1.8-meter resolution and panchromatic imagery at 0.46 meters – released its first images on Oct. 20 of Love Field Airport near Dallas and the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas.

DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), based in Longmont, Colo., is an 8C Founding Sponsor and leading global provider of commercial high-resolution world-imagery products and services for defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial customers. WorldView-2 was successfully launched on October 8 and is currently completing its routine calibration and check-out period. DigitalGlobe expects the satellite to be operational and delivering commercially available imagery products and services approximately 90 days from the launch date.

DigitalGlobe’s Chuck Herring has high aspirations for WorldView-2. “WorldView-2 will improve the speed and rate of imagery delivery to the government and commercial markets with large-scale collection capacity and daily revisit rates.”

“With WorldView-2, DigitalGlobe’s enhanced image collection and delivery capability is an important milestone in the progress of location-based services, GIS and other growing industries that define ‘Space 2.0’,” said Burke Fort, 8th Continent Project Director.

WorldView-2’s additional multispectral band capability also supports improved levels of feature identification and extraction and therefore more accurately reflects the world’s natural color.

“WorldView-2, working together with existing QuickBird and WorldView-1 satellites, gives us an annual imaging capacity equivalent to three times the earth’s land mass,” added Herring.

DigitalGlobe will preview first imagery from WorldView-2 at the GeoInt 2009 Symposium this week in San Antonio, Texas.

To learn more about DigitalGlobe’s advanced constellation of sub-meter satellites, please visit http://www.digitalglobe.com.

Swanson & Bratschun: Helping Engineers Understand the Broader Implications of their Inventions and Ideas

Bill Vobach, patent attorney and partner at the law firm of Swanson & Bratschun, wants to make something very clear to all the engineers out there: your entrepreneurial aspirations and innovations are indeed marketetable commodities.

“In my career I have found that engineers working in creating new technology too often think they have not invented anything. To them their innovations are ‘obvious’ and they assume that anyone could have come up with the idea,” he explained. “It’s a mental hurdle, but very often their innovations are patentable and need to be protected.” Getting clients over that hurdle and helping them protect their entrepreneurial ventures is what makes his job so enjoyable, Vobach said.

Swanson & Bratschun, a Denver, Colo.-based full-service practice was founded in 1994 and focuses on the acquisition, enforcement, and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights in the United States and internationally. In 2004 Swanson & Bratschun was ranked as the number one firm in the biotechnology category by PatentRatings LLC.  The twelve members of the firm have patent prosecution experience in virtually all technical fields, including biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, medical equipment and products, optical communications, computer peripherals, civil and environmental engineering, software and sports equipment. Many of S&B’s attorneys have advanced degrees in their areas of expertise, including seven PhDs.

“Entrepreneurs and scientists aren’t always business people,” Vobach explained. “But, they need the same legal and strategic business advice that any corporate executive would require. Our firm’s goal is to help our clients understand the legal strategies behind intellectual property, so that they know what’s protectable, when and how it can be protected, and how to use their budgets wisely.”

As Vobach describes it, an IP lawyer’s main objective is to assist a client in converting an idea into an asset. “Our job is to understand a client’s business so that we can determine how their intellectual property fits into the larger industry and then to set about protecting it.”

“Engineers and scientists tend to think of their inventions solely in the context of their specific design,” Vobach said. “We try and help our clients understand the broader implications of their ideas so that the invention can be protected even beyond the specific project for which it was originally developed.”

Vobach has a very keen, personal interest in space and the unique IP concerns surrounding its commercialization. “Space 2.0 covers a lot of different industries: medical devices, clean energy, chemical processing, software, and more” he said. “But, in the end, it is about commercializing and supporting entrepreneurs and protecting their intellectual capital from start to finish.”

Three Spacecraft Find Water on the Moon

In the last several weeks just about every major media outlet has covered a startling discovery: there is water on the moon. And, LOTS of it! From the Associated Press to ABC World News to Discovery to the Christian Science Monitor – this is big news!

The discovery – found by three orbiting satellites – was a big surprise to NASA and others in the scientific community. As much of the coverage points out, it will most certainly have a profound effect and significant implications for future human exploration. Not the least of which is that this all-important water might someday be used by human lunar explorers, who, as a NASA spokesperson put it, will “return to the moon to do science on the moon and perhaps (use) it as a steppingstone out into the rest of the solar system.”

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Roger Clark of the US Geological Survey and author of a paper on the subject was quoted as saying, “the discovery will forever change how we look at the moon. At the very least, the discovery lends weight to a new view of a friendlier solar system, where water…suddenly seems to be everywhere.” And, while the article noted that it is “unclear how this discovery will affect the debate in Washington over NASA’s future…the presence of water on the moon would presumably make colonization much easier.”

“Even with the discovery of lunar water in meaningful quantities, there remain significant challenges in retrieving it from the lunar soil and converting it into drinking water, breathable air, rocket propellant and other valuable exploration commodities,” said Burke Fort, director of the Colorado School of Mines’ 8th Continent Project. “But these are good problems – that is, opportunities – for NASA and the aerospace industry to have.”

Here’s the link to the Los Angeles Times article, and one to the New York Times.

DigitalGlobe Named Earth Observation Operator of the Year by International Firm

Congratulations to DigitalGlobe, 8C founding sponsor and a leading provider of commercial high-resolution, world imagery products and services for defense and intelligence, government and commercial clients! The Longmont, Colo.-based company has been named Earth Observation Operator of the Year by Euroconsult, a research and analyst firm specializing in the satellite sector.

The honor was presented at Euroconsult’s 6th annual Awards for Excellence in Satellite Management ceremony in Paris last month.

Euroconsult is the leading global research and analyst firm specializing in the satellite sector. Its annual awards for Excellence in Satellite Management are considered the highest tribute in the satellite sector, awarded to companies for outstanding achievement in important categories that include Earth Observation Operator of the Year. Awards are presented each September in Paris at World Satellite Business Week, now in its 13th year. A jury of industry experts applies rigorous quantitative and qualitative standards to determine award winners. The Awards for Excellence in Satellite Management recognizes companies who have made a particularly strong impact on the satellite industry through their vision, growth, profit or innovation.

“I am pleased to see DigitalGlobe recognized as the best-in-class global provider of commercial high-resolution earth imagery products and services,” said Jill Smith, chairman and CEO of DigitalGlobe. “The addition of this award category is a nod to the growing importance of commercial earth observation, and validation of DigitalGlobe’s success in expanding and shaping this market.”

Congratulations, DigitalGlobe!!

Keiretsu Forum Focuses on Marketplace Opportunities

If Steve Murchie, co-founder of the Keiretsu Forum, had just one salient bit of counsel to give to entrepreneurs it would be this: “Opportunities should be presented to angels and to VCs as marketplace opportunities, not as inventions or in a way that focuses on their ‘coolness.’

“The success of a new business is being able to think it through the market implications,” he continued. In other words, it’s one thing to have a cool invention and even to have figured out how to get it made, but it’s quite another to have thought a business venture through and grounded it in the reality of the marketplace.

“There are lots of cool inventions out there,” Murchie said. “But, the missing piece is that people don’t ask themselves some really key questions: What is it, who will care, how will you produce it efficiently, how and when will it be profitable, what and where is the market you need to reach and how are you going to reach them?”

Helping answer these questions and establishing an entrepreneurial venture’s viability is one goal of the Keiretsu Forum. The Keiretsu Forum is the world’s largest (and longest standing) angel investor network with 750 accredited investor members throughout eighteen chapters on three continents. Since Keiretsu Forum’s founding in 2000, its members have invested over $180 million in 200 companies. Forum members collaborate in the due diligence, but make individual investment decisions, with rounds in the range of $250,000 to $2 million.

As angel investors, Keiretsu Forum members evaluate companies and measure their viability using three key factors for success: the total capital required, the team in place, and the near-term opportunity to commercialize the technology. As Murchie put it: “As angel investors we tend to be even less patient than venture capitalists; our horizon is shorter.”

“Our focus is wide,” Murchie explained. “We work with information technology, clean tech, consumer products, healthcare, life sciences, and other segments with high growth potential. The unifying theme is interesting solutions to tangible problems.”

Space 2.0 is of particular interest to Murchie. “What the 8th Continent Project represents is particularly valuable,” he said. “Some entrepreneurs do garage-style innovation – meaning great ideas but not necessarily fully dimensional and applicable to the real world – which is okay but a long way from the marketplace. Space entrepreneurship is innovation coming out of deep research and is important because it is in an arena that the innovations can be repurposed. Therefore, the marketplace opportunities are big.”

By way of example, the Keiretsu Forum is currently working with a startup that is commercializing technology originating out of the Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. The company is developing a low energy radar system for providing security in the high-value container market. The project will have further applications in the homeland security arena.

“What makes the Livermore Labs project interesting,” he said, “is that their team has demonstrated that they know the technology and not only how to build it, but that they have also thought their technology through, have seen its potential, and know how to sell it.

“We are always looking for opportunities, always looking for that idea, that entrepreneur who not only knows how to create and produce a product or idea, but who also sees all of its market applications.”

Science and Space Technology Reach “Cool” Status

This is, according to NASA, “the coolest video EVER.” (That’s CNN’s emphasis!) We think so, too!

Check it out: CNN Video

When it comes to science and space technology, the “cool factor” should not be underestimated. It’s images like this – and the technology that NASA and scientists like Tom Wagner who is interviewed for this piece – that remind us all that space technology is not only fascinating and applicable in our daily lives (just as the technology demonstrated here helps meteorologists predict climate change and show connections between weather patterns all over the globe in real time), but it’s also just plain COOL!

It’s also important to note that this technology was developed not only by NASA scientists, but by graphic artists, as well. Proof of the interconnectedness between space and art, technology and innovation, and science and creativity.

Doing the Hard Work of Entrepreneurism

As with a great many things, the passage of time and the gaining of perspective and wisdom can change the way we look at the world.

Deming Center students get cutting-edge business and entrepreneurship courses

Such is the case with Paul Jerde, executive director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. For years Jerde worked as an entrepreneur and later as an investment banker and formed his impressions of entrepreneurship from those personal experiences.

Upon assuming his role at the University and considering entrepreneurship from the lens of education, he expanded his perspective on the importance and value of the entrepreneurial mindset and skills. “For me entrepreneurship was only about the ‘big idea’ and creativity and risk taking,” a perspective that he now finds to be too narrow.

Turns out, of course, that Jerde was half right. “What I came to understand is that in reality ‘big ideas’ are a dime a dozen. Yes, you need the big idea and the creative, out-of-box vision, the willingness to take a risk, but there’s so much more. Because once you have the big idea, then all the hard work starts.”

The hard work is what the Deming Center specializes in. The Deming Center opened its doors in 1995. Deming Center students get cutting-edge business and entrepreneurship courses; access to specialty programs in cleantech, bioscience, and natural/organic products; a rich connection of cross-campus opportunities; and engagement with the Deming Network of successful entrepreneurs. As Jerde put it, through the Deming Center’s unique program, students receive a “multi-dimensional education they need to thrive in today’s complex world,” including:

• Cutting-edge business curriculum with courses designed specifically for the entrepreneur;
• Access to specialty programs in cleantech, bioscience and organics;
• A rich, cross-campus focus on entrepreneurship that extends beyond the Business School to include Tech Transfer and the Bioscience, Engineering and Law programs; and
• Access to the Deming Network, an active group of world-class successful entrepreneurs who serve as mentors, provide internships, sponsor business plan competitions and are major contributors.

“Starting a business is a process and a discipline that can be taught,” Jerde explained. “Additionally the skills and rigorous process of starting a business can be applied in many other organizations – the feasibility and market analysis of validating that an idea is a good business opportunity and the discipline of articulating a business model to actually bring it to fruition.

“Entrepreneurs function in the most demanding of environments,” he continued. “There is a small margin for error, thin resources, and the landscape is always changing. So, it is crucial to apply critical thinking to entrepreneurship; that is our mission at Deming.”

The faculty at the Leeds School/Deming Center take that mission very seriously. To date over a 1000 students have taken the core entrepreneurship courses. Many have gone on to successfully launch a business or to join teams at entrepreneurial companies.

“We start with the idea and then help our students do the critical analysis and get all the nuts and bolts in place to determine if that idea is viable. Entrepreneurship integrates all business disciplines – from financing to marketing – and our goal is to help entrepreneurs take those big ideas and figure out how they get launched, how to market them and to whom.

“To start a business with scalability and with a broad palette of experience and seasoning is how I define success now,” Jerde said.

In recent years the Deming Center has put a strong emphasis on industry sectors that represent some of the world’s biggest challenges and therefore some of its biggest opportunities. These are also sectors that are prominent in Colorado and include renewable energy, organic products, biotech and aerospace. Given that the University of Colorado, known by many as “the space university,” is the number one NASA-funded university in the country, and that aerospace is one of the primary industries of the State, it is no coincidence that entrepreneurial innovations abound.

“The synergies between space innovation and entrepreneurship are huge,” he said. “This is one of the great emerging areas of opportunity and economic development.”

Jerde’s new definition of entrepreneurship has been updated and now, like the Deming Center, encompasses the complexities and craft of launching a successful business: “Entrepreneurs are risk takers. But, they also have to be able to create discipline out of chaos and do everything they can to minimize that risk.”

CU’s Technology Transfer Office brings research to businesses

“Publish or perish” has long been the motivating force driving those working in the rarified air of academia. But for technology transfer offices, the people responsible for commercializing the discoveries that result from academic research, the driving force is “PATENT or perish.”

Taking research and entrepreneurial ventures developed at a university beyond the ivy-covered walls into the commercial world is the mission of the University of Colorado’s Technology Transfer Office.

An 8th Continent Project Chamber member, the TTO is responsible for managing all the intellectual property generated by research done on the campus. The mission of the Office is to aggressively pursue, protect, package and license to business the intellectual property generated from the research enterprise and to serve faculty, staff and students seeking to create such intellectual property. Considering CU’s reputation for world class scientific and technology advancements, this is indeed a big job. According to Kate Tallman, Director of Technology Transfer for CU Boulder and Colorado Springs, over the last five years the TTO has helped start new ventures at a rate of about 10 a year. In 2007/2008 the Office received nearly 250 inventions from within the University system.

Tallman said that the TTO primarily provides administrative support—IP administration, policy development, compliance, and financial management—and oversight to the campus offices. The four campus offices receive and process invention disclosures. Specifically, TTO provides the following services:

• Advises faculty on IP issues
• Fosters inventor participation in the technology transfer process
• Educates campus researchers about the technology transfer process through a variety of means including seminars with guest speakers
• Solicits and analyzes invention disclosures from faculty, students, and staff
• Analyzes commercialization feasibility of university intellectual property and subsequent strategies
• Licenses “tangible research property” for commercial use
• Licenses patents and copyrights for commercial use

As Tallman pointed out: “Taking research or inventions and helping the people developing it to the patent stage is a huge asset. We help our faculty make their research discoveries commercially viable and into something that someone would want to invest in while at the same time protecting their stake in the technology. Having a patent allows researchers to profit from their intellectual contributions and it increases the chances of commercialization.

“Inventions, scientific and technological advances seldom occur within the context of a well defined problem; rather it is typical for faculty to develop technology ‘solutions’ independent of market-defined needs or problems. Most university IP is considered ‘raw technology’; it is incomplete, unrefined, and years from being formulated into products or services ready for commercial markets,” she added.

Licensing new technology to innovative companies also creates significant economic development benefits. University IP frequently becomes the proprietary foundation of new companies – a process and outcome well understood in Colorado’s entrepreneurial, technology centric community. Furthermore, because many top scholars in scientific, medical and engineering fields desire to create impact beyond the laboratory and classroom, the TTO helps the University attract and retain these talented people. It for these reasons that technology transfer is increasingly integrating into the academic culture and becoming understood by the Colorado’s technology community.

Some of the more note-worthy companies that have benefited from the TTO’s assistance include Cold Quanta (an 8C incubator startup focused on of Bose-Einstein condensate generating devices and systems,), Colorlink (which was acquired by RealD for its advanced 3D projection technology), and Myogen (which went public and was subsequently acquired by Gilead Sciences for its heart therapeutic technology).

Tallman pointed out that because of the University’s long history in the area of space innovation, being a part of the 8^th Continent Project is a natural fit.

“When we have a new space-related company that needs the TTO’s help, we can tap into the 8C incubator and have access to a network of individuals and entrepreneurs of all kinds that can give us a keen understanding of what technology works, where it might go, how it might apply,” she said. “This feedback and networking is invaluable; it saves time and keeps us focused.

“Not all scientists or academics are entrepreneurs, and they do not need to be entrepreneurs because 8C allows them to access a community of entrepreneurs who know what it takes to turn their invention into a business.”