Artsnova Digital Art and Space

A person who shall remain nameless talking to noted science fiction author Ben Bova about global warming on Mars.

I recently completed the construction of a photo gallery for the National Space Society. The 2007 International Space Development Conference Photo Gallery gallery features 148 photographs of the people and events of the 2007 ISDC which took place May 25-28 in Dallas TX.

This gallery came into being as a consequence of a suggestion that I made: that having a gallery of photographs of the 2007 ISDC would be a good way of promoting the 2008 ISDC. I was subsequentially given a DVD of photographs taken at the conference by Nancy Ostertag - the photographer contracted for the job. Sifting through these photographs I came up with 148 to use in creating the gallery.

Looking back over the gallery I find that there are a few especially noteworthy photographs. In particular:

• Best Smile Award goes to Cassie Kloberdanz.
• Best Award Presentation Style goes to NSS Senior Vice President Mark Hopkins who gets down on his knees to present former Apollo Astronaut and U.S. Senator Jack Schmitt with the Gerard K. O’Neil Memorial Award.
• Best Speaker Photograph Award goes to the photograph of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin because of its excellent lighting.

While the gallery has been up since last week, it has not yet been publicly announced so for you Artsnova readers, you’ve got a scoop. And if you want to find out who that nameless person in the above photograph is, you’ll just have to search through the 2007 International Space Development Conference Photo Gallery.

By way of full disclosure, I currently serve as the Chair of the NSS Web Oversight Committee and am also a candidate in the upcoming NSS Board of Directors election - having been nominated both by the Nominations Committee and by petition.

Ad Astra, Jim

After the Storm: Grand Prize Winner
used with artist’s permission

The winners of the National Space Society Space Settlement Art Contest have just been announced. As one of the five judges for the contest, my job was to vote on the best 12 works of space art out of the 69 submitted.

My fellow judges for the contest included space artist Don Davis, my friend and fellow space artist David Robinson, the Chair of the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee Bart Leahy, and Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, Executive Director of Yuri’s Night.

There were two rounds of judging. The first round consisted of voting for the grand prize image, a best in category image for each of the contest categories: Orbital Settlement, Lunar Settlement, Martian Settlement, and Asteroid Settlement; and voting for another 7 images for inclusion in the calendar. For the second round judges were presented with the top 12 vote getting images and were asked to vote again for the one grand prize picture and the four best of category pictures.

For my part, choosing the image to receive the grand prize presented no difficulty what so ever. After the Storm by Raymond Cassel was clearly the best entry in the contest. The image was original, realistic in its depiction of dealing with the consequences of a martian dust storm, and technically well executed. Obviously my fellow judges were in agreement on this one. I asked Raymond if it would be okay with him if I used his image to illustrate this blog entry and he kindly agreed.

The winning image in the Lunar Settlement category was The Lunar Greenhouse by Jonathan Chapin. For the Orbital Settlement category, Goetz Scheuermann won with his O’Neill Style Cylinder Colony. In the Mars Settlement category, Martian Evening by Timothy Hodg won. Bryan Versteeg took the prize in the Asteroid Settlement category with his Asteroid Mining for Station Creation.

Of the four categories, choosing a winner for the Asteroid Settlement category was the hardest because the three contending images were all so good. Of course the best aspect of the contest was all the new space art that got created. You can see all the artwork that was submitted to the contest, as well as the rest of the winning images, at the Gallery for Space Settlement 2009 Calendar Art Contest. You may also want to read the press release about the contest winners.

In closing, I would like to congratulate not only the contest winners but all the artists who took the time to create and submit entries to the Space Settlement Art Contest.

Ad Astra, Jim

Apollo 13 astronaut James Lovell, Jim Plaxco, and NSS Executive Director George Whitesides and the Heinlein Award

I recently took the time to cast my ballot for whom I considered deserving of the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award. This award is sponsored by the National Space Society and serves to honor those individuals who have made significant lifetime contributions to the creation of a free spacefaring civilization. The Award is in memory of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. In addition to his hard SF novels, Heinlein served as a Director of the L5 Society - which later merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society. The 12th Heinlein Award will be presented at the National Space Society’s 27th International Space Development Conference to be held in Washington, DC in May 2008.

If you take a look at the above picture, you will see me holding the Heinlein Award that was presented to Captain James Lovell of Apollo 13 fame in 2004 at a ceremony at the Illinois Institute of Technology. And yes, the award is in the form of a brass cannon. Why a cannon? In what I consider Heinlein’s best novel - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - the brass cannon was the symbol of the lunar revolution. In fact The Brass Cannon was the working title of the book until it was renamed The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Quoting from the book: “When Luna adopts a flag, I would like it to be a cannon… It can fly in our hearts… a symbol for all fools so ridiculously impractical as to think they can fight city hall.”

In order to be eligible to receive the Heinlein Award, the person must either still be living or have passed away less than three years prior to the starting date of the ISDC at which the award is presented. Additionally, a person can receive the Heinlein Award only once. Previous Heinlein Award winners are Dr. Gerard K. O’Neill, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Dr. Wernher von Braun, Gene Roddenberry, Dr. Robert H. Goddard, Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Dr. Carl Sagan, Neil Armstrong, Robert Zubrin, Capt. James Lovell, and Gen. Chuck Yeager.

In voting for the recipient, you get to vote for three candidates - first, second, and third choices. A list of the top vote getters from prior years is provided as an aid but space is provided for write-ins of your own. The list of previous non-winning top vote getters is:

Online voting for the Heinlein Award ends January 15, 2008. Voting is restricted to current members of the National Space Society so if you’re not a member and want to be able to vote, you had better join.

Moon Base Art - David Robinson

Time for traditional artists to grab their brushes and digital artists to grab their digital brushes. The National Space Society is sponsoring its second space art contest. Like the first space art contest last year, the submitted art is to depict space settlements in our solar system and unlike so many other art contests, this one is free. Yep, there is no submission fee. Art is to be submitted in one of four categories: lunar settlements, Mars settlements, asteroid settlements, or orbital settlements. Twelve winning images will be chosen and used to illustrate the NSS 2009 Space Settlement Calendar. FYI, the NSS 2008 Space Settlement Art Calendar has been sold out since early last month.

In the interest of full disclosure, I chaired the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee and served as chief judge for the previous contest. This time around, I have limited my participation to serving as a contest judge. My fellow judges are Don Davis, Bart Leahy (this year’s chair and padawan apprentice), Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, and my pal David Robinson whose lunar base artwork adorns this post.

This year’s space art contest has a great line up of prizes. There will be twelve winning entries selected: one Grand Prize, four First Prizes, and seven winning entries. Full contest details are available at the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest site.

Here is a great chance for all space artists to create their visions of a spacefaring future - a future where humanity’s home is no longer just the Earth but wherever we choose to live in the expanse of the solar system. But hurry, the deadline for submissions is December 31, 2007.

Think Space!

Ad Astra, Jim

Apollo 17 Astronaut Harrison Schmitt (right) and Jim Plaxco at the 2007 International Space Development Conference

The Winter 2007 issue of Ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society, features an article on the Top 20 Space Visionaries. The goal: to identify those 20 individuals alive today who are having the greatest impact on humanity’s future in space.

The twenty people listed are:

1. Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne fame.
2. Peter Diamandis - founder of SEDS, cofounder of International Space University and XPRIZE founder.
3. Eric Anderson - cofounder of Space Adventures.
4. Robert Bigelow - founder of Bigelow Aerospace which aims to provide inflatable habitats to low earth orbit.
5. Dr. Stephen Hawking - noted physicist and supporter of human space exploration.
6. Elon Musk - founder of SpaceX, which is working to create a family of low cost ELVs.
7. Mike Griffin - the current NASA Administrator.
8. Dr. Sally Ride - the first U.S. female astronaut to go into space.
9. Dr. Martin Sweeting - designer and promoter of small satellites and CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited.
10. Buzz Aldrin - most noted for the Apollo 11 mission but also an active advocate of human space exploration.
11. Harrison “Jack” Schmitt - Apollo 17 astronaut, geologist, and champion of mining the Moon for Helium-3 as a fuel for fusion reactors.
12. Franklin Chang-Diaz - former director of the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at Johnson Space Center and creator of VASIMIR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket). He created Ad Astra Rocket in 2005 to pursue VASIMIR development.
13. Russell “Rusty” Schweickart - Apollo 9 , cofounder of the Association of Space Explorers and chairman of the Board of Directors for the B612 Foundation, an organization whose goal is to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.
14. Dr. Laurie Leshin - Director of Science and Exploration at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
15. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - former President of India and aeronautical engineer. Worked on development of India’s first launch vehicle: SLV-III.
16. Anoushen Ansari - of Ansari XPRIZE fame and first female space tourist via a 2004 Soyuz trip to ISS.
17. Simon “Pete” Worden - doctorate in astronomy, brigadier general in the USAF who was involved in the DC-X and Clementine programs. Currently director of NASA Ames Research Center.
18. Neil Degrasse Tyson - Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York.
19. Bradley Edwards - a leader in the field of space elevators.
20. Robert Zubrin - author, co-developer of the Mars Direct concept, founder of the Mars Society.

You can post your comments about this list to the NSS Members Write blog. My comment on the list of visionaries was to wonder why Dr. Stephen Hawking was on the list but Sir Richard Branson was not. After all, it is Richard Branson who founded Virgin Galactic to take Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne to the next level and to actually open the door to real private enterprise based space tourism - as opposed to tourism sponsored by the Russian government. I would drop Hawking and substitute Branson.

And what about Dr. Peter Glaser, the father of the Solar Power Satellite concept and member of the Space Technology Hall of Fame? His idea of creating a system of Earth orbiting solar power satellites to supply electric power to Earth could have a profound positive impact on our future. Also there is Dr. David Criswell, creator of the Lunar Solar Power concept and Director of the Institute of Space Systems Operations at the University of Houston. The Lunar Solar Power concept relocates those Earth orbiting solar power satellites to the surface of the Moon.

As to who to drop from the list to make room for these two additions: I would remove two of the following - take your pick: Dr. Laurie Leshin or Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam or Dr. Martin Sweeting or Neil Degrasse Tyson.

What do you think? You can comment here or at the NSS Members Write blog.

Ad Astra, Jim

National Space Society Award for Excellence Presented to Jim Plaxco

Well I’ve been home almost a week from the ISDC (International Space Development Conference) and I still haven’t fully caught up. I have quite a store of materials, recordings, and photographs to go through in order to produce some written reviews of some of the presentations I attended.

I arrived in Dallas at noon on Thursday the 24th just ahead of thunderstorms that were to cause massive flight delays and cancellations. I wound up sharing a shuttle bus to the hotel with an author working on a book about space tourism. Arriving at the hotel, I dumped my bags and headed straight off to the afternoon session of the Space Venture Finance Symposium. After sitting through three of the presentations, I ducked out in order to attend the meeting of the NSS Fundraising Committee. While not a member of the committee, I felt obliged to attend in order to report on the financial aspects of the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest and Calendar.

A dinner break and it was back to committee meetings. While I sorely wanted to attend the Space Settlement Advocacy meeting, I felt obliged to attend the meeting of the Web Oversight and Internet Development Committees. These were the two committees I created as chair of a special committee established to identify an alternate solution to the society’s Internet needs. Fortunately our committee was able to implement an all-volunteer system of web site support while procuring complimentary hosting from CyberTeams, producing substantial cost saving for the society. The meeting finally broke up shortly after midnight and that’s when I called it a night.

Friday was the first full day of the conference and I attended too many sessions to cover here. I also got a nice guided tour of the ISDC Space Art Show and Sale which had some very cool space art. Unfortunately I just can’t recall the name of the attractive young lady who so kindly walked me through the show. The Friday night dinner featured science fiction author and scientist Dr. Ben Bova whose presentation I will cover at a later time. Following dinner, which lasted a few hours and included a number of award presentations, I headed back to my room in order to download the photographs I had taken that day and to go over the three presentations I was slated to give on Saturday.

Saturday was more sessions and a busy afternoon as I had my own three presentations to give. Probably the most interesting session of the day was given by General Simon “Pete” Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, who delivered his talk via the virtual community Second Life in which NASA has a presence. Afterwards General Worden appeared from behind the curtain to take questions from both the live audience as well as the audience in Second Life.

Saturday’s Gala Dinner featured Dr. Steve Squyres, Principal Scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission who spoke at length about that mission. The most memorable moment for me was when, during the awards segment that followed Dr. Squyres presentation, I was presented with the National Space Society’s 2007 Award for Excellence (see graphic above) in recognition of my work as the chair of the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest and Calendar Committee.

With my presentations behind me, I took the opportunity to spend Saturday night partying. I stuck it out until after 3:00am before heading back to my room in order to dump the photos I had taken that day to my laptop. Probably the longest conversation I had that evening was with Darel Preble, chair of the Georgia Tech Space Solar Power Institute SSP Workshop. We had an extensive discussion on, you guessed it, space solar power. You can learn more about Darel and hear him interviewed about space solar power on The Space Show.

Sunday came much too quickly. It was another morning of space with Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society opening the day with his Mars Direct presentation. The luncheon speaker that day was Apollo 9 astronaut and B612 Foundation Chairman Rusty Schweickart who spoke about the NEO impact hazard. Earlier Rusty had graciously autographed a 16×20 photo composite I had created from NASA photographs of his Apollo 9 mission. The speaker at that evening’s NSS Awards Dinner was former U.S. Senator and Apollo 17 Mission Scientist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt whose presentation dealt with mining lunar helium-3 as a fuel source for fusion reactors. His book on the subject, Return to the Moon was one of my primary sources for a class I taught on the subject at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

Monday morning I opted to attend the three hour Moon Rock and Meteorite Samples Certification Course. I had previously taken this course in 1989 and felt that it was about time that I go through the course again. A good portion of the class was spent doing hands-on activities meant to be done by students in the classroom. I think most people liked making craters the best.

And that is how ISDC went for me. Following the Moon Rock class, it was time to check out and head to the airport. As it was on my arrival, the weather was nasty but I was able to catch an earlier flight by flying standby and was able to depart Dallas before the worst of the storms hit.

It felt good to be back home but am not sure when I will be able to go back through the pages of notes I took, the hours of presentations I recorded, and the hundreds of photographs I took. ISDC may be over but the real challenge of ISDC still awaits me.

Ad Astra, Jim

International Space Development Conference (ISDC)

Tomorrow I leave for Dallas and the International Space Development Conference (ISDC). If you are attending the International Space Development Conference this weekend, you may be interested in attending one of my presentations.

My original schedule had me doing three presentations and serving on one panel - “Chapter Outreach Tactics: What Works, What Doesn’t, What Hasn’t Been Tried Yet?” Unfortunately tight scheduling forced me to withdraw from the panel as one of my other presentations was slated for the same time slot.

Following is my presentation schedule for the ISDC, all of which are on Saturday May 26:

The ISDC is a great space conference and has quite a lineup of speakers, including Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Rusty Schweickart, and Harrison Schmitt. This is the only space conference that I regularly attend.

Ad Astra, Jim

Photoshop National Space Society Banner Let’s Build a Future Together by Jim Plaxco

Last night I submitted an entry to the NSS (National Space Society) Banner Design Contest. What made my submission unusual is that I am one of the judges for the contest. This left my fellow judges wondering what my intentions were - was I dropping out as a judge to become a contestant? Did I want a crack at the $500.00 cash prize? Not at all I explained. The night before (Wednesday) I had gone to the NSS Banner Design Gallery to look over the submissions that I would be voting on. Unfortunately I didn’t see any that I really liked. Most were far too science fictiony for my tastes given that these designs are to be used to produce a banner promoting the NSS and its chapters. I expressed my negative feelings to my fellow judges in an e-mail. After sending that e-mail, I thought “why just criticize - what can I come up with?” I figured that I would see what I could do so later that night I set out to create my own banner design. It is that design which is the illustration for this post. You can see a larger version on my submission page.

In creating this banner, there were five basic elements to consider:

• the background image
• the NSS logo
• the NSS name
• an appropriate slogan
• creating a composition from these individual elements

For a background, I decided to go with a lunar landscape that featured an Apollo LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). To achieve this, I composited together a series of Apollo 16 70mm Hasselblad images. These became a single layer in my Photoshop document. I located a separate image of the Earth, also from the Apollo 16 mission, taken en route to the Moon. I brought this into Photoshop as another layer. To this I added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer as a clipping mask and slightly increased both the saturation and lightness of the Earth.

I now had to come up with a slogan. A page full of scribbled ideas later, I decided to go with “Let’s Build a Future Together.”

Lastly, with the Moon, the Earth, my slogan, the NSS logo, and the NSS name all on separate Photoshop layers, I began to work with both the placement and the sizing of the individual elements. At this point the only element that remained static was the lunar background. I eventually arrived at a composition that I was happy with and called it a night.

Yesterday after work I used the automated design submission form to enter my design in the contest. Why not give it a try yourself. You can find all the details about the contest at the National Space Society Banner Design Contest web page.

Ad Astra, Jim

This coming May I’ll be attending the International Space Development Conference in Dallas TX. I always look forward to ISDCs for the people and the presentations. I am especially looking forward to the space art related presentations, the space art show and art sale.

I am slated to give two presentations at the conference. One presentation I’ll be giving is Selling Space: The Waterfall Approach to Public Outreach which deals with a methodology for organizations to consider in implementing public outreach efforts for the purpose of promoting space exploration.

The other presentation I will be giving is The National Space Society Space Settlement Art Contest and deals with the recently concluded NSS space settlement art contest. Our committee recently completed work on the associated calendar and it is now in the hands of the publisher. The calendar will first appear for sale at the ISDC. I also completed an article about the contest and calendar for Ad Astra magazine. Unfortunately there was only room enough to cover the grand prize and four first prize winning images.

Writing the abstract was somewhat difficult given the word count constraints and the fact that I definitely wanted to mention all 12 winning entries and artists. To do that, I had to omit the background on the organizing and execution aspects of the contest. The abstract that I submitted follows.

If you’re curious, here are links to the Grand Prize and four First Prize winning entries:

• Grand Prize: The Return to Abalakin
• First Prize Orbital Settlements: Islands of the Gods
• First Prize Moon Settlements:Moonbase Preparations
• First Prize Mars Settlements: Mars from a Young Perspective
• First Prize Asteroid Settlements: Asteroid Settlement: Slingshot to the Galaxy

Or you can just go to the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest Gallery.

Ad Astra, Jim

It’s been three months since I originally wrote about the National Space Society’s Space Settlement Art Contest. The art submission period closed a couple days ago and the process of judging the entries has already begun. Seventy submissions made it through the screening process. There was actually a rather large number of submissions that were rejected. The most common reason for rejection was that the artwork failed to meet the contest’s subject and realism requirements. Perhaps most surprising was that the submitted images were spread so equally across the four contest categories: Asteroid Settlements, Mars Settlements, Moon Settlements, and Orbital Settlements. We were sure that we would be overwhelmed with pictures featuring Moon and Mars settlements. Also suprisng was that the Asteroid and Orbital categories appear to be the overall strongest.

Of the accepted entries, about 90 percent were created using software and 10 percent created using traditional art media. For software, I was not surprised to see that Bryce was the most commonly used 3D graphics package. I was especially pleased to see so many Lightwave submissions as that is the 3D software I am currently in the process of learning. There were also a few submissions using Pandromeda’s Mojoworld software, an exceptional 3D package specialized for the creation of planets. I myself am a user of Mojoworld and Pandromeda was the first sponsor of our contest - thanks to the courtesy of Ken Musgrave.

The work of space artists has always been an important component of space exploration. The artist’s ability to envision a spacefaring future and to then protray that vision in such a way that others can see the possibilites of the future is crucial to helping people understand what a spacefaring civilization is all about. Recognizing the importance of imagery, NSS activists decided that a space settlement art contest would be a great way to achieve several objectives:

• getting artists interested in portraying space settlements,
• establishing an online art gallery to help people understand space settlements,
• producing a space settlement calendar to more widely spread the idea of a spacefaring future.

In looking over the entries in the gallery, I am quite struck by the imagination exhibited by the artists relative to portraying our future in space. For example, in the Moon Settlement category, there is The Soaring Arena by Bill Wright which features Lunarians donning wings for human-powered flight around the lunar dome. In the Orbital Settlement category, we have Inside Orbital City by Murphy Elliott with a colorful biker on what is an apparently juiced-up jet-bike, not to mention Richard Bizley’s romantic Islands of the Gods shown at the top of this article. Perhaps the most emotional of the submissions is to be found in the Mars Settlements category. The piece Mars from a Young Perspective by Javier Arizabalo is simply a picture of a young boy out on the surface of Mars with a calm thoughtful look on his face as a spaceship takes flight in the background. I wonder what he’s thinking.

Once the judging is over and assembly of the calendar is complete, it is my plan to prepare a presentation summarizing the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest and reviewing the associated 2008 Space Settlement Calendar. Likely venues for this presentation are the International Space Development Conference in Dallas and the Duckon Science Fiction Convention in Chicago where, I am proud to say, I am this year’s Science Guest of Honor.

While we do not yet have space settlements, you’ve got to go and check out the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest Gallery to see what a number of artists think that future may look like.

Ad Astra, Jim