Sean Casey knows there are some good ideas out there. Great ones, even. Ideas in the nascent field of microgravity science that could jolt more traditional disciplines like medicine and materials science and may well change the world. The only problem is that Casey doesn’t quite know what those ideas are.
And that’s where the Space Hacker Workshop comes in. This weekend, Casey and the Silicon Valley Space Center (SVSC) will welcome dozens of citizen scientists, academics, and entrepreneurs - a group united by its belief in the potential of the New Space Age.
As launch costs to low Earth orbit plummet thanks to a number of new launch companies, space has become a newly accessible domain for a range of activities. Tourism has generated the most buzz among the general public (Virgin Galactic looks ready to start commercial flights early next year), but backyard tinkerers and billionaire moguls alike sense there’s more to be discovered.
Casey draws comparisons to nanotechnology, a field that has revolutionized our view of how nature works at the smallest of scales. Similarly, more activity with space-based science should allow scientists and engineers to develop “microgravity intuition” and shift our understanding of how gravity influences natural processes. Experiments around the aging process and advanced materials seem well-positioned to make an early impact.
Of course, NASA has already devoted billions of dollars over the years to space-based science, but inverting the demographics of the field might be the key to future breakthroughs. “NASA’s work has given us hints about what’s possible,” says Casey, “but now we need to get the full educator, entrepreneur, and scientific communities thinking.”
To Casey, it’s a numbers game. If you have more people developing more ideas for space-based applications, you’re more likely to find something transformative. And while NASA was allowed to operate with the market inefficiencies of “blue skies” research, New Space pricing is “amenable to angel and venture investors,” says Casey, which brings in a sharpening, streamlining profit motive. “The lean start-up model forces you to acknowledge which assumptions you’re making and decide if it’s really the best way.”
The promise of important breakthroughs is creating a supporting market to construct, test, and standardize the components of spaceflight science. “A lot of technology needs to be developed for these laboratory modules,” explains Casey. “There are a lot of capabilities that work in a 1-g environment that you’d like to modify and put those on a microgravity platform.” A number of engineering firms are racing toward what Casey calls “the killer app for microgravity,” – a single standardized unit that could support a range of experiments. Custom-built experiments are extremely expensive – just ask the Mars Science Laboratory – and a modular approach would help both users and launch companies plan with a greater degree of certainty.
To help prime the pump, Casey and the SVSC have acquired experiment cargo space on 10 XCorr suborbital flights. With 12-15 modular labs per mission, more than 100 experiments already have a pathway to space.
“We want to show that space is accessible,” says Casey, “and that it can lead to breakthroughs we can’t yet imagine.”
