ISPS 2006 aims to make space flights personal

The second annual International Symposium for Personal Spaceflight (ISPS 2006) was held in Las Cruces, Mexico on the 17th and 18th of October 2006.

The three day Symposium, put on by the New Mexico State University was followed by two days of the X Prize Cup — a nascent World's Fair of space travel that involves rocket firings, NASA-sponsored competitions.

The symposium is held annually as part of the X PRIZE Cup competitions. The X PRIZE Cup – featuring Lunar Lander Challenge and Vertical Rocket Challenge competitions, Space Elevator games and other attractions – took place at the Las Cruces International Airport.

Speakers and panelists for the two-day event included more than 30 aerospace industry leaders and pioneers – CEOs and top managers of new enterprises such as Virgin Galactic, Rocketplane Kistler, SpaceX, Starchaser Industries and the Rocket Racing League, as well as established companies such as Lockheed Martin and government agencies such as the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA.

Another important personality to attend the event included Buzz Aldrin, one of the astronauts to have made the Apollo 11 mission a success.

This year the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) & the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) joined in to enhance our understanding of the requirements & of the thrills & opportunities that await you in a place called space.

During the seminars, astronauts talked about space etiquette and hygiene as well as things like the best ways to take a photograph of Earth from space.

This was joined by terrific presentations by companies like Virgin Galactic and Rocketplane Kistler, two of the many firms vying for the potentially lucrative personal space flight market.

The X Prize was a US$10 million delight for the first privately built, reusable manned spacecraft that could achieve the suborbital height of 100 kilometers. It was won for the first time in 2004 by a squid-like wonder called SpaceShipOne that was designed by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company, without government funding.

"This is a place where you can actually meet the people, meet the companies that are building spaceships that can actually take you there," says X Prize founder Peter Diamandis. "We are a forum for investors, government representatives, entrepreneurs."