November 3, 2018 – Monthly Meeting Details – Space Law

Join us our next meeting of the NSS North Houston Space Society  Saturday (November 3, 2018) at 6PM at my house (9327 Swansea Bay Dr.; Spring, TX 77379).  I’ll send out more details as we get closer and  we have several sites to keep you updated:

We will have a guest speaker in November:

Nathan Johnson is a space law attorney licensed in Washington, DC, and has worked in the emerging commercial space industry. He worked at the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation during SpaceX’s first berth with the International Space Station, on Capitol Hill during deliberation over regulating commercial human spaceflight, and has consulted for private companies and investors in evaluating new and novel business opportunities in orbit, lunar, and deep space. He also volunteers as the Executive Director of the new Texas Space Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy group which works to increase awareness, activities, and action on behalf of the regional Texas space economy.

Nathan Johnson will discuss the history of space law, including the context of when it was created, the structure and principals of the major Outer Space Treaties, and the application of it on an international and domestic level throughout the past 50 years. He will talk about how space law has affected exploration and discovery, and how it will apply to the future of mankind’s endeavors in space.

Recap of our October 6, 2018 Meeting – BFR/BFS

Announcements:

If you are not already a National Space Society (NSS) member, please sign up.  It is only $20.  And if you join through this link, half of that comes back to our chapter to help pay for food, supplies, and anything else that will help us in our mission to keep up on advances in Space Exploration and sharing that with others.

Next month (November), the New Worlds Conference is happing in Austin, TX on November 9-10, 2018.  Find more information and sign up at http://newworlds2018.space/.  There are many great guest speakers and people to meet there.  While I won’t go into them all, there are a few to point out Richard Garriott one of the private space explorers who has spent a week on the ISS will be there.   Dr. Philip Metzger from the UCF Florida Space Institute gave a great presentation covering the moon mining contests that he oversees.  Last years presentation was amazing seeing the variety of approaches to this problem, his analysis of commonality of certain design characteristics of successful designs.  Rick Tumlinson is the main guy behind the conference.  He has been a very successful advocate for space.  Holly Melear who runs STEAMSPACE will be hosting the cities in space contest.  It is amazing to see the creativity of these students.  Bill Gerstenmaier the NASA Associate Administrator, Human Exploration and Operations.  Last year I got to speak to him for a bit before the conference started.  And there are many, many more.  I definitely recommend going!  http://newworlds2018.space/

There are some local events on drones, space talks, and some other related topics that STEM-E, Youth Career Development Program will be hosting.  Check out the events page at https://www.steme.org/events.

BFR/BFS

Did you see the big announcement about DearMoon?  check out this video:

This was announced on Sept 17, 2018 at SpaceX headquarters.  The plans to send a handful of artists around the moon, a group of people that might be able to take that experience and share it in such a way that the billions back here can feel like they were on it too.

More details about the current iteration of the BFR/BFS system can be seen at the announcement:

We seem to be getting BFR/BFS announcements about once a year.  Sept 29, 2017 at  IAC in Adelaide, Australia:

And then the original announcement Sept 27, 2016 at IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico:

My younger son, wife, and I attend this.  We were able to sit in the VIP section because the efforts of the great people over at the reddit SpaceX group

You can see that we are about 4-5 rows from Elon presenting on the stage.  And had a phenomenal view:

The BFR/BFS will open up space in amazing ways:

But how to pay for it?  Use it for point to point transportation here on earth:

Next Meeting:

Join us our next meeting of the NSS North Houston Space Society  Saturday (November 3, 2018) at 6PM at my house (9327 Swansea Bay Dr.; Spring, TX 77379).  I’ll send out more details as we get closer and  we have several sites to keep you updated:

NSS North Houston Space Society – October Meeting – SpaceX BFR

Join us for the October meeting of the NSS North Houston Space Society this Saturday (October 6, 2018) at 6PM at my house (9327 Swansea Bay Dr.; Spring, TX 77379).  We will be having pizza.  Below is the agenda of the meeting. (Feel free to forward and invite others.)
Also, we have several sites to keep you updated:

 

Focus of the meeting will be SpaceX’s BFR

SpaceX has announced the latest design for their BFR Rocket which will allow for global travel to be completed in 30 minutes instead of 12 hours on a plane. It will have the greatest capability and the lowest operational cost of any rocket ever produced. And in 2023 it is planned to send a group of artists around the moon. (The first time that humans have left low earth orbit this century.)
See more:
https://www.spacex.com/mars

Check out: http://dearMoon.earth