I was able to attend the 2002 meeting in Denver. Unfortunately, it was not long after September 11th and attendance was less than expected, particularly after the very successful 2001 meeting in Albuquerque where references to the movie 2001- and some disappointment about how far we still had to go – were obligatory, as well as the call to Sir Arthur Clarke in Sri Lanka. Fortunately for me, the low attendance meant being able to chat and get to know a variety of very interesting people with a passion and strong vision for our future in space. Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society was perhaps the most interesting though we only chatted briefly; dinner with Keith Lofstrom and Robert Hoyt (of Tethers Unlimited) was much more fun.

Before the 2002 meeting, I had become active in the Moon Society and somehow was given responsibility for organizing the Moon track there. We did get interesting speakers, including Paul Blase of TransOrbital, which has a private lunar orbiter mission on track for launch later this year. We also had one very controversial speaker – Richard Steiner, a biologist from the University of Alaska, who had a proposal for declaring the Moon (or at least parts of it) a world heritage site, in order to prevent development and exploitation which he felt would harm it, aesthetically… that got quite a bit of after-the-fact publicity, including from a Wall Street Journal article. Leonard David of space.com wrote up our session rather nicely.

So, on to 2003! Themes for the Moon track this time include use of lunar resources for space solar power, with David Criswell our keynote speaker; large-scale space telescopes on the Moon; the Moon as a unique laboratory for biological research; and use of Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange orbits to stage a variety of different missions.

Of course, the Moon isn’t the only topic at ISDC: Zubrin should be there again, with Pascal Lee and others to talk about Mars; a variety of private space ventures will be represented (XCOR, JP Aerospace, etc.) with discussion about the X-prize and prospects for the suborbital and orbital tourism markets. Eric Drexler is scheduled to speak about nanotechnology, and NASA’s nuclear Prometheus Project is on the agenda as well.

It should be an interesting weekend!