Jonathan Card, a guest columnist and 8th Continent Project volunteer and Lunar Ventures Competition attendee, wrote a compelling creative non-ficiton piece about his experience at LV 2008. Combine Lunar Ventures, motorcycle travel, Space 2.0 and twisty mountain roads, and you have “How I Spent My Weekend”, a compelling story about the Lunar Ventures competetion from an outsiders perspective. Due to length, we will post the essay in three parts starting with, “Getting to Golden”:
“How I Spent My Weekend”
I attended the Lunar Ventures Business Plan Competition, hosted by the 8th Continent Project at the Colorado School of Mines. I get a little self-conscious about my interest in space; itʼs not an easy topic out in the “real world”. I tell people what I write about and either their eyes glaze over or they laugh and say, “well, thatʼs Jon!” But, what I saw this weekend was exactly the kind of thing that keeps my attention.
The 8th Continent Project is a group at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) determined to collect on the investment the United States and other nations made in the development of space technologies by encouraging the growth of entrepreneurial activity in space and space-related activities.
Golden, Colorado, home of CSM, is nestled in between the Front Range, the first precipitous slopes of the Rocky Mountains, which rise like the statues of Argonath signaling “Halt!” to thousands of miles of prairie stretching to the Appalachians in the east, and two great mesas, one to the north-east and another to the south-east. The town sits in a small valley with the only roads in and out squeezing through the small gaps between them. High above the town is Lookout Mountain offering one of the most magnificent views on the entire North American continent.
I arrived on Friday night for the kick-off display of the competition’s finalists and for the “elevator pitch” competition. The six finalists were students from various universities around the country and ranged from directly space related to only peripherally related to related only by using the space tie-in to get consideration for the prize.
During the first walk-around to see the companies, I talked to each of the six finalist teams. GeoHopr is a social networking site hoping to leverage Geo positioning Satellite (GPS) systems to alert you when one of your friends is close to you. Chance encounters with a good friend are a great joy – make sure you donʼt miss one.
LITD wants to make chemical-additive concrete. Concrete is a major business (how many buildings can you think of that donʼt have some in it?), but in some areas, from Tucson to the Luna (Earthʼs principal natural satellite, of course), water is scarce. Making concrete with less water is important, with a clear path to make money here (on Earth) in order to benefit advances there (in space).
IntAct wants to treat “low density” industrial waste to not only help the environment, but generate electricity at the same time. They were kind enough to point out that human waste is “low density” and the applications
both terrestrially and in life-support systems in space could save lives.
Orbit Frontiers LLC has plans to serve as a data aggregator. There are terabytes (terabytes? couldnʼt resist) and terabytes of telemetry data sitting dormant “in the closets” of satellite owners around the globe from Indiana to Indonesia. Alone, these terabytes are trivial information to satellite owners but aggregated together they can mean huge advances to satellite manufacturers and researchers in every culture on Earth.
Check back soon for part II of Jonathan’s essay!
Filed under: Space 2.0 | Tagged: Lunar Ventures, Space 2.0
