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NewSpace Conference Releases Agenda For 2012 Conference

SILICON VALLEY, Calif. — The agenda for this year’s NewSpace Conference, to be held July 26-28, has been released. The panels cover a wide range of topics pertinent to the current state of the space industry from “Space Meets Cyberspace” and “Moving Forward with What We’ve Got” to “Opportunities in Military Space” and a roundtable with NASA’s leadership.

Participants will be guided through these thought-provoking panels by the likes of NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Managing Director Steve Jurvetson, NASA Associate Deputy Administrator for Policy Integration Rebecca Spyke Keiser, FAA Associate Administrator of Commercial Space Transport George Nield and Sierra Nevada Space Systems Chairman Mark Sirangelo. A more complete list of the speakers joining NewSpace 2012, as well as keynote events, will be released soon.

CONFERENCE AGENDA

Thursday, July 26, 2012 — Developing Products and Demands

09:00 — 10:15 Nurturing New Ideas

Starting a business is difficult, especially in a small and specialized market like the space industry. There are many ways to receive help through partnerships with space business incubators, NASA research parks, and universities. Can we better innovate through collaboration? We will survey the support organizations that assist new companies and discuss the value propositions of each type of working relationship.

10:45 — 12:00 Not Your Traditional Commercial Crew and Cargo Panel

With the CRS moving along and CCDev 2 over, players in the commercial crew and cargo are ramping up for what’s next. This capability they are developing enables business ideas that would have been shelved a few years ago. In a previous panel, we focused on the startups for ideas. In this panel, we bring together companies and organizations that are active in making commercial crew a reality and ask them, “What do you want people to do with your product and service?”

14:00 — 15:15 NASA Leadership Roundtable

NASA centers provide different services and offer unique technical expertise to commercial companies. Some have innovation centers are hosts to different companies. How are these relationships working and can we improve them? Leaders of these centers come together once again to discuss their experiences and perspectives.

15:45 — 17:00 Democratizing Space

In the past decade, we have witnessed an amazing level of initiative and many successes in space related activities from the private citizens. It’s clear that people can no longer wait for the future to happen and are taking matters into their own hands. The range of activities span across the board from participatory (un)conferences to suborbital rockets, from flying teachers to flying student experiments. The panelists will discuss the next steps in providing inspiration and access to space activities to more people.

Friday, July 27, 2012 — Opening the New Opportunities of Tomorrow

08:15 — 08:45 Space Investment: Creating a Viable Industry

While great visions exist for economical and viable space businesses, the art of creating a business is beyond just being able to meet the technical challenges of the business. This panel will explore what makes a viable space business. How can space businesses, either existing or new, expand their terrestrial applications or create ones to access broader markets? This panel will also explore in what sectors the panelists would like to see more competition or business interest and try to forecast possible future opportunities in the emerging space market.

08:45 — 10:15 Business Plan Competition

The NewSpace 2012 Business Plan Competition is an event that brings together promising new business startups, who working to help develop the final frontier, and is includes investors, business leaders and space advocates. Startup companies developing products/services that are directly space, space-related, or “space scalable” are invited to participate. The judges for the competition are skilled and experienced professionals in the investment and business development communities, hailing from around the country.

10:45 — 12:00 Business Plan Competition

The NewSpace 2012 Business Plan Competition is an event that brings together promising new business startups, who working to help develop the final frontier, and is includes investors, business leaders and space advocates. Startup companies developing products/services that are directly space, space-related, or “space scalable” are invited to participate. The judges for the competition are skilled and experienced professionals in the investment and business development communities, hailing from around the country.

14:00 — 15:15 Opportunities in Military Space

While America’s civil space program makes up a large source of funding for the space sector, it is dwarfed by the amount of funding that is put into the military sector. In an era of shrinking budgets, there is a strong desire from mission planners and the military to minimize costs. There are many opportunities for commercial companies to work in this sector to expand mission capabilities more efficiently. This panel will address what commercial opportunities are available for involvement in the military sector. Furthermore, discussion will focus on how the military will be affected by the reduction in cost being caused by the Space Commercial revolution. Additionally, how will the ability to purchase existing products (launch seats vs. bids) change acquisition strategy for the military?

15:45 — 17:00 Space Meets Cyberspace: Newspace &.COM

The DotCom revolution in the 90′s and 00′s revolutionized the way the world communicates and created a multi-billion dollar industry that is here to stay. Unfortunately, even though the digital age was boosted up by the space age, space is still a small market with less players and less capital than the information technology world. In this panel, we seek to understand how parallels can be drawn between the DotCom boom and the budding NewSpace industry to create a better roadmap to revolutionize the space industry and boost it into the Space Frontier.

Saturday, July 28, 2012 — The Blueprints of Giant Leaps

09:00 — 10:15 Space Settlement Panel

The ultimate goal of space exploration is space settlement: sending humans to live permanently beyond the cradle of Earth’s atmosphere. People often assume that permanent settlement is many decades in the future. This need not be the case. There are many things we can do right now that would dramatically accelerate the pace of space settlement. With the right policy and technological choices attendees at NewSpace 2012 could well be among the first to live permanently in free space, on the moon and even on Mars.

10:45 — 12:00 Space Alternative Architectures

The Space Frontier will not be settled by one means alone. This panel will focus on various alternatives that exist within the spaceflight community that complement the path forward we will take in our next steps. Key questions will include how we can most effectively and quickly reach the space frontier with proposed and alternative solutions, and how can we most effectively take advantage of NewSpace companies for accelerating the process of reaching the future.

14:00 — 15:15 Approaching the Singularity

NASA’s Technology Road Map identifies key technologies that will help NASA achieve its ultimate mid-term goal of landing humans on Mars, but the technological needs of Newspace may not be perfectly aligned with NASA. In this panel, we discuss what technology paths are critical to the success of Newspace, what technologies should be developed faster than NASA’s roadmap plans for to allow a greater impact in the industry, and what technologies NASA forgot about that could help accelerate the progress of both NASA’s goals and NewSpace’s cash flow.

16:15 — 17:30 Moving Forward with What We’ve Got

It’s easy to paint a picture of the future if technological realism is ignored and we look at the world through rose-tinted glasses. In this panel, our panelists will describe their vision of the next 20 years of space exploration over the next 20 years assuming the current state of technological development and without relying on dream technologies that have eluded development so far.

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The communication and networking that is the core of NewSpace 2012 will help the commercial space industry reach a critical mass of products and customers. Thursday covers Developing Product and Demand with panels that talk about democratizing space for private citizens and the products being developed by NASA’s commercial programs. Friday’s big event is the NewSpace Business Plan Competition and is titled Supply Lines to Space Profits. Realistic and indispensable tips on building a space company will be shared in panels like “The Down and Dirty of the Space Business.” Saturday’s Settling Into Space is about moving forward with settlement as a goal, both from a visionary and practical standpoint. Finally, the entertaining and glamorous NewSpace Awards Gala will close the conference by recognizing those taking bold steps towards space.

Hosted by the Space Frontier Foundation, NewSpace 2012 is a prime opportunity for the next generation of space companies to lay out a roadmap with established space leaders. View the panels to see how NewSpace 2012 covers the near term issues as well as long term vision and register today to get involved. The conference will be held at NASA Ames Research Center.

Discount registration for NewSpace 2012 is available for at a limited time. Visit newspace.spacefrontier.org to register, where you can also find information about the group rate at the Hyatt Regency in nearby Santa Clara. RSVP on Facebook today and follow the NewSpace Conference on Twitter for updates.

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Tags: Ames Research Center, commercial space, George Nield, Lori Garver, Mark Sirangelo, NASA, NASA-Ames, NewSpace 2012, NewSpace conference, planetary exploration, private astronauts, SFF, Sierra Nevada Space Systems, Space Frontier Foundation, space settlement, Space tourism