Marc Rayman in the High Bay at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Credit: NASA
The 2020 International Space Development Conference® is just around the corner, and organizers have been working hard to ensure a great event this year. This year’s conference chair Anthony Paustian and Conference Committee Chair Dave Dressler have some great speakers lined up. “At the beginning of each episode of Star Trek, Captain Kirk would close the opening titles with, ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before,” Paustian explains. “While we did send men to the Moon a few years after Star Trek’s premiere in 1966, going further has eluded us. ISDC 2020 will continue the journey and explore how we can once again send people back to the Moon in order to reach Mars and beyond.”
Notable speakers include Peggy Whitson, a former astronaut and the first female commander of the International Space Station. She was the oldest woman to perform an EVA and also holds the record for the most cumulative days in space for any NASA astronaut at 534 days.
Phil Plait of “Bad Astronomer” fame will speak on a variety of cosmic topics. Steve Jurvetson, a billionaire investor in NewSpace who provided a much-needed financial boost to SpaceX in 2008, and who has steered large investments in Planet Labs and other commercial space ventures, will speak. Jurvetson has also accumulated the largest known private collection of space-age paraphernalia. Prominent oceanographic explorer David Gallo, the Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will speak on the connections between deep-sea exploration and space settlement.