SpaceUp San Diego February 12, 2011

On Saturday, February 12, I traveled to San Diego for the SpaceUp unConference, a gathering of people interested in space exploration. As I researched past and current space histories the past year and a half, SpaceUp stood out as a new and exciting nexus of information about citizen movements to get into space. This is a post-NASA world to some extent, although I think we as a society are struggling to balance public and private interests, we are in fact in something like a civil war over issues of the value and purpose of government and the place of corporations in our culture.

I found the video and photo documents of last year's (2010) SpaceUp to be quite intriguing and so had a strong interest to attend this year. I decided it would be a valuable forum to pitch my memoir-film concept about growing up under the space program, the child of a space writer. The rapid T-5 talks presented last year were a bit of a phenomenon, particularly Andy Cochrane's "Space is Boring" rant, which kicked some strong opinion and energy into the meetup. I expected a fairly friendly audience and an opportunity to get a document of me presenting my story pitch in public. While I only attended the afternoon and evening of Day 1, I had a great experience at SpaceUp and think it is a terrific annual forum for space enthusiasts from all walks of life.

The Price Student Union Loft at UCSD turned out to be an excellent venue, with 30-minute seminar sessions running in adjacent rooms, the center being a large bar-restaurant with a staging area. It was just the right size for the number of attendees, which was probably around 100, including organizers. Funny to enter the building and find SpaceUp across the hall from a student group rehearsing The Vagina Monologues. How diverse.

Pretty soon I was standing around a group discussing the topic "Making Space Sexy", which didn't draw me in initially but I observed from a distance and eventually took some part in. Many good ideas were shared, some questions like: why should celebrities and other millionaires have access to space before well-trained scientists? I expressed my concern that we are a schizophrenic culture: on the one hand rewarding hard work over time and on the other offering lotteries and get-rich-quick answers to the same questions. A woman from England told us how baffled she is at Americans' blase opinion of space. It dawned on me later that we are so caught up with cyberspace that we have largely lost our farsightedness, can longer peer into space (or is it the city lights that blot out our night vision?).

Another seminar session was titled Space Exploration and the Arts, in which a small group discussed everything from the literature that initially got them into space (Ray Bradbury and the recent Red/Blue/Green Mars series came up) to the most recent television depictions of space travel: Firefly and Defying Gravity. The same room then hosted a group discussion of how commercial projects could lead the way and finance continued scientific progress in space. There was talk of space as a manufacturing zone that can withstand pollution byproducts in ways the Earth's atmosphere no longer can.

A nice vegetarian buffet meal was offered, at least no one around me noticed any "space meat". I also had a pint of Stone IPA and a Racer 5. The mood was mildly festive and a lot of people seemed familiar with one another from last year's gathering. There were about 6 members of the SpaceX private spacecraft venture at the conference and quite a few other professionals. SpaceUp seemed a bit like a recruitment and job fair opportunity for some who were there; several young student enthusiasts were there to meet and greet representatives of companies they'd like to work for. I paced a bit and worked on my prepared text.

I spoke with a handful of people, met Chris Radcliff, organizer and liaison for the event. Talked with a photographer named Michael, who told me that there was also an air show going on that day celebrating 100 years of aeronautics in San Diego, that his wife and kids were stuck in related traffic. We also talked about the excellent PBS special ASTROSPIES we had both seen last year.

Around 7PM the T Minus 5 talks began, starting with a discussion of the group from Michigan University who have succeeded in launching their own cubesat, a small satellite payload. For a full survey of the T-5 talks you can go to:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spaceup-sd-pod-one

And to view my particular presentation:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/12659844

I was sure at the time of giving the talk that I had botched it. I do not frequently speak to assembled audiences. The attendees seemed much more interested in current space-related activities than 30 or 40-year old stories. Fortunately, these video documents show that I WASN'T HALF BAD! I generally communicated my piece and did so with some humor, stumbling a few times.

I had a couple of great coversations after the T Minus 5 segments. I was talking with Andy Cochrane, who gave another lively talk called "Space Is F@@king Dangerous" to close the night's event, telling him how impressed I was with his Powerpoint expertise. Again, his "Space Is Boring" address last year helped enliven the whole conference, and this year he received a good ovation again. Andy is a young filmmaker living in Los Angeles and his approach to presenting is informative to me, as someone who wants to win over supporters and financers to make film. His talk this year was good, including several "slides" which contained video clips in them, so he worked in a few surprises beyond the static 15 slides up for 20 seconds each. Andy said he hadn't slept for several days, and his talk may have suffered for that a little because he seems to make a weird factoid error in saying that we've only explored to 380 miles, when he must mean we only have a quasi-permanent presence at that distance.

Anyhow, another conference attendee and part of the oragnizing committee, Dave Dressler, approached Andy and me as we talked, and I was certain he wanted to speak with Andy: star of last year's conference and he'd just closed out this day, but Dave turned to me, told me he'd appreciated what I'd said and we had a great talk. After a short while, Dave commented, "Yeah, I could see that you are kind of living in your father's shadow," which was a small revelation to me, just having it put that way. This project of telling my father's story, and my own alongside it, has become a consuming goal. It speaks to having grown up under extremely interesting circumstances, with a father whose involvement in the heavy activities of the period I did not appreciate or understand then. Having drifted apart since my parents' divorce, I didn't have an active or helpful paternal voice in my life. This project is a way to redress that.

More soon.