[Orekit Developers] Brown University Space Horizons Workshop: Space Infrastructure

[Michael Turner <michael.eugene.turner@gmail.com>]

Coming in late February 2014:

http://spacehorizonsworkshops.wordpress.com/

"Space Infrastructure focuses on the role of pre-placed facilities and
resources that allow a spacecraft to accomplish a mission goal without
hauling a full suite of supplies and capabilities up from the launch
pad.  At a certain point there are enough spacecraft in orbit that it
pays to start building “highways, service plazas, gas stations, cell
phone networks, hotels, water mains and coordinated traffic lights” –
obviously not exactly those things. Yet there must be a clear tipping
point where space infrastructure begins to dramatically lower the cost
and complexity of space systems ...."

The exovivarium concept is probably premature for this Brown
conference, since there's not enough detailed design on it yet. At
best, it's synergistic with space hotels:
  http://www.projectpersephone.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/PmWiki/OrbitalTourismSynergy

However, I have proposed (and have recently begun work on) a Project
Persephone activity that could help tie together quite a few of this
workshop's "not-exactly-these-things": integrating Orekit, an orbital
mechanics class library, into SpaceNet II, a space logistics
application.

  https://basecamp.com/2318622/projects/3363257-integrate-orekit

This technology might be key to assessing just where the "clear
tipping point" will be, for any true space economy that exovivaria
might serve.

Orekit has a set of ESA Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS) project proposals:

  https://www.orekit.org/forge/projects/orekit/wiki/SOCIS

Here's a goal that I think is reasonably modest: send this Space
Horizons Workshop a student (or more than one) who has worked on the
integration of Orekit into SpaceNet II. The work product should meet
the requirements of Orekit's project (see above) to "Create a
demonstration application with user interaction for Orekit features".
Ideally, the student(s) would be from one of the Project Persephone
equatorial mountain beneficiary zones (Indonesia, East Africa,
Ecuador), with their participation considered part of
space-development capacity-building for those developing nations.

Regards,
Michael Turner

Project Persephone
K-1 bldg 3F
7-2-6 Nishishinjuku
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0023
Tel: +81 (3) 6890-1140
Fax: +81 (3) 6890-1158
Mobile: +81 (90) 5203-8682
turner@projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry