...was impossible at the recent 2007 International Space Development Conference in Dallas, although I attended with that specific goal in mind. One of my life-long heroes, Buzz Aldrin, was a speaker at the conference and I had naively hoped to take about twelve seconds of the good doctor's time to hand him a CD of my radio interview with him (see previous post) and perhaps get a snapshot of the two of us shaking hands. Alas, it was not to be. Nor was I the only one similarly disappointed. One young man apparently attended the conference in the vain hope that he might be able to add Dr. Aldrin's autograph to a large model rocket which was already covered with the names of astronauts and rocket scientists.
When we arrived at the Intercontinental Hotel and went to registration to pick up our media passes, the luncheon at which Buzz was speaking was already under way. After hassling with having to get Victoria Rose's press pass reprinted we had just enough time to sprint upstairs with the goal of catching him as he came out of the room. The luncheon was still in progress and as we walked up to the dining room another gentleman was trying to gain entry without much luck. He was speaking with a rather stern looking conference staff member.
"I'm a speaker at this conference and I had to buy my own ticket," he said. " I've worked with Buzz Aldrin and now you tell me that I can't come in here and hear his talk because I didn't pay for the meal?"
The staff member ducked inside and appeared moments later with a bigger, sterner, staff member. The three of them huddled and spoke in hushed tones, then the staff quickly ushered the guest inside. Victoria Rose and I took up stations on a sofa in the waiting area next to the young man with the rocket. A few minutes later some press folks showed up, flashed their press passes and were admitted without incident. Emboldened, Victoria Rose and I approached the door, flashed our badges and were waved through. We stood against the back wall and listened to the last fifteen or twenty minutes of Dr. Aldrin's talk.
It rained the entire time we were in Dallas and it was rather warm in the hotel. Between the heat and the humidity I was dripping worse than an ice sculpture at an Iraqi wedding. Great, somebody is going to have to towel the poor guy off after I shake his hand, I thought. I looked around. How come nobody else is sweating?
Buzz appeared to be in his third or fourth digression from the intended topic of his speech, criticizing NASA for bad decisions and political compromises that he felt hurt the space program, when suddenly he changed lanes without signaling and took a sharp left. Now he was talking about how his wife insisted that he attend social functions, which he didn't care for, and the intricacies of wearing a tuxedo. Then, as if overcome by the realization he was in the wrong place, he abruptly ended his monologue.
"I would love to stay and answer a bunch of questions, shake a bunch of hands and sign a bunch of stuff," he said. "But I have a plane to catch."
In an instant he was away from the podium and headed toward me flanked by two burley conference staffers.
"Here comes Buzz Aldrin!" I thought. He was a little shorter in real life than I expected him to be. I didn't even have time to raise my camera for a close up snap before he whisked by me and out the door. "Hey, there goes Buzz Aldrin!" I thought. I closed ranks and Victoria Rose and I trailed him out of the room. The kid with the rocket was waiting expectantly just outside, magic marker in hand.
"I'd love to sign all your stuff," Buzz called as he hurried by, "But I've got to get to the airport!"
I looked around for the crowd clamoring for his autograph, but it was just me and Rocketboy. Buzz had already disappeared around the corner. The poor kid was crushed. You could almost smell his disappointment. You know, I've never actually seen a rocket go limp before.
I found it highly ironic that Dr. Aldrin gave a speech at a $45.00 a plate luncheon to a bunch of aerospace industry insiders on the importance of courting the general public to the cause of space exploration, then not having three minutes to spend greeting members of the public he hoped to inspire.
The rest of the conference was pretty much the same. My strategy was to not attend the lecture sessions, although the riff on the "Effects of Spaceflight on Microbial Gene Expression & Virulence" sounded like a real knee-slapper, instead trying to catch featured speakers as they moved from venue to venue in the hope of grabbing a sound bite or two. Trouble was, most of the industry guys were huddled in small groups with other industry guys, and not in much of a mood to talk. The vendors weren't much help either.
The fellow from the Mars Society chatted me up when I stopped to look at their model of a mars settlement that appeared to be made out of elbow macaroni. But when I pulled out the digital recorder and asked to capture his words for the radio audience, he clammed up.
He told me, "I know that this is exactly the kind of publicity we need, but I was up late last night and I'm just not up for an interview this morning."
He said something about being, "camera shy," which I thought was odd, since I wasn't pointing a camera at him.
I wandered around a little and stopped off at the Dallas Robotics Society table. There were a variety of kit-bashed wheeled and tracked RC robots that looked ready to rumble in the nerd version of gladiatorial combat. One contraption at the end of the table had neither wheels nor tracks. In fact, it looked like it was made out of an erector set and some leftover adding machine parts.
"What's this one do?" I asked, making small talk.
One of the guys manning the both sneered at me as if I had just asked who Isaac Asimov was. He replied snidely, "It does whatever you program it to do."
"Yeah," Said another guy sarcastically, "What do you want it to do?"
I thought to myself, "I was hoping it was a robotic sphincter, but it is obvious machines will never replace man in that area."
The first guy quipped, "I like the idea of programming it to pinch women's butts."
Ah, the dream of every inventor, that the creation surpass the abilities of the creator...
"Do you guys actually know any girls?" I thought.
But the highlight of the conference for me was running into the two students from UT Arlington who had brought their large robotic rover which was designed to navigate on its own using GPS technology. It will be a great boon for exploration, provided we land on a planet orbited by GPS satellites. They had been testing it in the parking lot earlier. I asked them how their test went.
"It didn't work," Said one young Einstein dejectedly.
"What was the problem?" I asked.
The kid looked at me incredulously. "Have you seen this thing? It has a million parts!" He said.
Uh, yeah, but didn't you put them all together?
I asked what the biggest challenge was in getting the thing to work.
The kid thought for a moment and said, "Well, first the hardware has to work." Then the other kid piped up, "And the software has to work too!"
Uh huh, the hardware has to work, and the software has to work too. Aren't those pretty much the fourth and fifth laws of robotics?
Did you kids come up with that all by yourselves?
I grinned as they left, their robotic planet rover rolling along a few feet ahead of them. I thought it was poetic that they were making it tote a large cardboard box of its own broken parts. It might not have been much of a planet rover, but it made a pretty decent motorized shopping cart.
That was the conference in a nutshell. Victoria Rose and I had other adventures, stemming mainly from me driving around lost in the rain, but that is a story for another day.
Sorry bout all the disappointments at the conference; I know you had your heart set on something grand. Reality of behind-the-curtain is like that. We were in the throws of moving, during your Dallas trip, but would have still loved to have seen both of us. You're more than welcomed to spent any time with us in our new nest in Lewisville.
Posted by: Falconmyst | June 17, 2007 at 11:07 AM