In the Business of Space Settlement (part of the Venture Cafe' series)

Al Globus
One day in 1978 Al Globus’ housemate brought home a stack of CoEvolution Quarterly issues, including an issue discussing Princeton professor Gerard O’Neill’s vision of free space settlements. Al was electrified. As soon as he graduated he got a job as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center eventually working on Hubble, ISS, X37, shuttle, earth observation, teleoperation, molecular nanotechnology, asteroid mining, and bone development in micro-g winning many awards and publishing many papers along the way.

More important, he made two primary contributions to space settlement. The first was founding and managing the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest for 6-12th grade students now in its 25th year. 10,000 students participated in 2018. The second involves revisiting the assumptions of the studies that electrified Al in the first place. Two of these assumptions, the need for radiation shielding and limited human tolerance of rotation, are not quite as iron clad as believed. This reduces the mass of the first space settlements by at least two orders of magnitude! The consequence is that small space settlements in Equatorial Low Earth Orbit may be practical even when launching all the materials from Earth.
See http://space.alglobus.net for details.

In the Business of Space Settlement
This talk, from 6:30-7:30, will present the concept of free-space settlement, how these settlements might be financed, and near term commercial opportunities that could contribute to building the first space settlements. Additionally, Al will briefly share how St. Louis students can participate in the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest.

World Space Week
This talk is a registered World Space Week talk. See www.worldspaceweek.org and http://www.worldspaceweek.org/events/event-details/?eventID=19030 for more information.