NewSpace 2007 developments

Just heard from the organizers of the NewSpace 2007 conference that I'm to chair a panel discussion on commercial access to orbit. The panel has a great line-up, with more to come: http://www.space-frontier.org/Events/NewSpace2007/. Scroll down for the listing for Saturday, July 21. We go on at 9:45 a.m. This will mark my public speaking debut on the topic of my forthcoming book Rocketeers.

I've also been promised an exhibit table, which will be a great place for me bring the discussion from the panel when we run out of time there. I'll bring some advance copies of the book for folks to check out. I might be able to preview a new project I'm working on too. More on that soon....

California wildfire seen from Genesis

This just in from Bigelow Aerospace: the company's Genesis I satellite shot this view of Los Angeles and the Channel Islands last Friday, when wildfires threatened resort communities on Catalina Island.

You can see the smoke plume emanating from the island at the lower right of the photo. Click to see a bigger view.

Bigelow Aerospace is currently the only NewSpace company in orbit, with another launch planned for later this month. Genesis I and Genesis II are trial balloons--really--for the first commercial space stations. Both the test satellites and the full-scale stations are designed to be inflated from a compressed state when they reach orbit, thus saving space on launch and allowing for larger stations than is possible with conventional rigid designs.

Rocketeers reading at the National Air & Space Museum

It's a dream come true for me--the chance to talk and sign books at the permanent home of SpaceShipOne. I'll be at the National Air & Space Museum's gift shop on the National Mall on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, July 20, from 3 to 5 p.m.

This is a pre-release event in tandem with the NewSpace 2007 conference, where the book will go on sale for the first time.

Next day, I'm to moderate a panel discussion with some of the rocketeers featured in my book at the conference. The details for that are still being worked out, so stay tuned.

Finally, on July 20, I'll read from the book and sign at the Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. That museum features a Burt Rutan-designed VariEze, the airplane that launched Rutan's career. The VariEze led directly to Rutan's design for SpaceShipOne, and that's one of the things I'll talk about.

You can keep tabs on these and my other upcoming appearances at my website: www.michaelbelfiore.com.

Rocketeers launching at NewSpace 2007

It's official: my forthcoming book, Rocketeers, will launch at the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2007 conference. The conference runs July 18-21 in Washington, DC, more than a week before the book's release to stores. Conference-goers will have the first opportunity to buy the book.

The Space Frontier Foundation is one of the premier organizations boosting commercial spaceflight, so this is the perfect place for my book launch.

The lineup of conference speakers so far includes Apollo moonwalker Edgar Mitchell, Ed White, author of the influential book The Overview Effect, Virgin Galactic chief pilot Alex Tai, Rocketplane Kistler Passenger Number One Reda Anderson, the FAA official in charge of commercial spaceflight, Patti Grace Smith, and lots of other prominent folks in this burgeoning industry.

Smithsonian Books will donate pre-release copies of my book to the Space Frontier Foundation, which means that 100 percent of the proceeds from sales of the book will support the foundation. I'll be doing signings at the conference and participating in other activities still to be finalized.

The supply of books at the conference will be limited, so midway through the conference, on Friday, July 20, I'll be doing a reading and signing at the National Air & Space Museum, just a couple of Metro stops away. Stay tuned for more on that.

Rocketeers excerpt

I have an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Rocketeers, up at the newly revamped michaelbelfiore.com.

Check it out and let me know what you think (yes, that's Tim Pickens riding his rocket bike). Let me know what you think of the new site too.

Zero-g super powers

I spoke this weekend with lunalight4r5d, the winner of the $75,100 eBay auction for last Thursday's zero-g flight with physicist Stephen Hawking. Lunalight4r5d, who wishes to remain anonymous, gave me the best endorsement of the zero-g experience I've heard yet.

"It's not really like being weightless in water," she said. "Water has its own weight. You're still experiencing something like a pressure. But this is the feeling of no pressure." Going weightless made her realize "how rarely we experience an entirely new physical sensation over your whole body, and that was just so different. I couldn't have really anticipated what it would feel like."

In fact, she said, it wasn't until she got back on the ground that she "understood the magic" of the experience. "It was like I had gained this momentary super power that I couldn't access any more. I felt like I should be able to just launch off the ground and go flying across the hotel lobby."

Like flying in a dream, Zero-G Corp. founder Peter Diamandis has described the weightless experience, and lunalight4r5d agreed.

In dreams, we're pure spirit, freed of the constraints of our bodies. For Hawking, unable to move most of his body because of a degenerative nerve disease, the difference between free fall and life under gravity seems more pronounced. But, really, his is the fate we all share: shackled to the ground, barely able to lift ourselves.

Hawking and other visionaries have said that we must settle space if we're to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, and that may be true. But their space dream is equally inspired by the desire to set free the human spirit.

Lunalight4r5d comes from a family of philanthropists, and the eBay auction presented an irresistible opportunity to support the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation, one of her favorite charities.

Sharing the Zero-G flight with one of this century's greatest minds pushed an already sublime experience into the realm of the surreal. "I really almost felt like I was a person reading about it in some history book in the future. The red apple floating around as a tribute to Isaac Newton, and just connecting him to the greats of history," she said of Hawking, "that was the most phenomenal experience."

Rocketeers off to the printers

Okay, well, not quite, but my role in creating the book is over, and now it's up to the production department at Smithsonian Books to input my final, handwritten changes to the layout, and ship it to the printer. My editor hopes to have bound galleys ready for reviewers by May 1, and then it goes on sale August 1.

Of course, my work is far from over. In fact, some would say it's just begun. Next comes promoting the book, which will mean doing lots of interviews and trying to get as many media impressions as I can.

Step one is to launch a revamped website at www.michaelbelfiore.com. I'll have excerpts, blurbs from advance readers, my schedule of appearances, and lots of other goodies. Stay tuned.