Per Aspera Ad Astra: From Peru to Space

I don’t care the long hours, the non existant salary (yet) and our cheap CEO. This pays everything:

“Mr. Cuba,
Thank you for the Interview, It has been a lot of help in my math project, and the quotes have helped me with an English project too. Good luck

Sincerely,
Eric Trine

P.S. I haven’t taken Spanish yet but I plan to.”

Good luck Eric!

* This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Almost a year ago I posted an entry named “A rant on time”, regarding how companies, big and small, could forget that they exist for their costumers. It isn’t rocket science, just a bit of common sense.

Now for the second part. On Monday I sent 3 emails to different providers. I wanted to know the available sizes for stainless steel tables and their prices. Only one answered on Wednesday and asked my phone so she could talk with me. At the end, she spent US$2 calling my cell phone asking things she could have asked via email. Sigh. The worst part is that I am still waiting for the price.

Since I couldn’t wait any longer, I decided to use the phone and spend US$1 in calls. In the first company they gave me excuses like “he isn’t here” or “he’s had a lot of work”. Why should I care? Anyway, they passed me this guy who took an aggressive position. Hello! I am possible customer! Another sigh. Anyway, he promised to send the price later in the day.

The second company excused itself, “he’s been out a lot”. Again, I don’t care. They promised to send the price and they did, it just arrived (quite expensive btw)

When I called the third company I was tired of telling them that they sucked regarding to emails. Fortunately, the guy who picked up the phone took all my information immediately and promised to send the price later in the day.

I don’t want to end like grandpa Simpson, sending letters telling them that they suck big-time, but it seems I will have start to do it. Why? Because for some reason, I have this image of myself, 40 – 50 years old, traveling in a zodiac in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, trying to fix a blunder from a LPG 3rd world supplier. Grrr.

Well, sorry people. Next time I will (try) to post something merrier.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Although I haven’t seen the movie (yeah, shame on me), the title has something cool about it. Anyway, we have started the spanish translation of the web page. In reality, we started it a week ago, but I lost everything. The reason, I never had used CMS.

At first was Chinese but in reality it is kind of simple. Unfortunately, the learning process included an “oops” and all the text was lost. Oh well, no pain no gain.

We hope to have the web completely translated by the end of the month. The only thing I am not very sure about is if we are going to be able to put it online without causing some disaster.

I foresee trouble with IT…

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

It is kind of usual that in the new year festivities, strange things happen. For example, a friend of you dissappears and his girlfriend wants you to find him (weeee, quite boring stuff to do in new year). You can also find an old acquaintance who wants to, ehem, remember good ol’ times. Or you may wake up 4am and find that you lost new year because by 9pm, you were absolutely drunk.

So, it’s quite interesting to see what God has prepared for you. Anyway, here I am, at a 1000+ party on the beach, returning from buying a beer when suddenly *poof*, no lights.

If you have lived in Peru in the 80′s and 90′s, then you don’t find it strange. At that time we were suffering the terrorist attacks of Sendero Luminoso and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (you may find more info in Wikipedia). In those decades it was quite common to find yourself with no electricity, looking for candles & matches. In other words, we are used to blackouts.

Although this time was no terrorist attack. It was a simple failure and we only had to wait. Of course, the first thing that people do is to whistle and scream some “enlighted words”, but after some minutes they usually continue with what they were doing (except dancing)

Suddenly, I noticed that everyone was looking up. For the sky was as clear as it can be, and the whole branch of the Milky Way extended itself across the horizon. As I walked around in a slow-time bubble I saw couples smiling, friends explaining the constellations and drunks simply staring at the infinity of space.

It only lasted 10 or 15 minutes, but I can say from that experience that people do like space. The problem is that they don’t see it on their day by day.

We have to bring it down to Earth.

* This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Well, after many days of sun and sand, I am back; but even in vacations, work manages to get around.

One of the most common question I have been asked about the SE is “Why don’t you make something good here on Earth, like the cure for cancer. Space is so distant and far away”. For some time I must admit I didn’t give a good answer. I adopted a defensive stand point like “That’s what I want to do” and felt like I had lost the argument.

I hated to be placed in that position, specially when asked by people who weren’t doing anything good for Earth. What kind of right did they had to question the project in which I worked if their were slackers themselves? It pissed me off.

Time has passed and as I gained experience I found the answer which I know and feel is right. When asked why we don’t do something more “useful” like helping the poor, I say “Well, we are a private company. Our goal is to make a profit and our debt with society is to generate wealth. We are in it for the money”

Ok, not everyone likes the answer. When mentioned the word “money”, some of them shudder, like if it was some type of disease. They look at you in horror, wondering what kind of monster are you for wanting to make a fortune instead of helping the sick & poor.

But they simply have no further argument. They fall themselves in the same idea since they can’t argue that profit is what private industry does. Oh, they will still question the project with other reasons, like distance (space is 100km from the surface, where is the distance?), weaponization (we are private, not goverment. And BTW, there still are thousands of nuclear warheads around), radiation (we won’t use radioactive material), the cable falling down (7.5kg per kilometer), contamination of the orbit (actually, we will clean it), conspiracy theories (lots of recommended reading), economy (US$100 billion industry, and growing), usefulness (do you like your cable TV, cel phone, debit card and those cheap long distance calls? Better make a shrine to satellites) and some more lesser ideas.

At the end they still feel that they have “higher reasons” and “better values” than us. I don’t care. Although I like a lot to teach about that whole world (space industry) that exists beyond the common knowledge, I know that we will always find people who opposes us. Be it a Space Elevator, or a gold mine in Peru’s Andes, you will always find someone who questions you. And the effort to change their opinion ain’t worth the time (ergo, money). Better use it doing something useful for the world like creating jobs through the private sector.

To me, it is the best way to increase humanity’s standard of living.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Yesterday JL and I had a radio interview in 1160, one of the biggest radio stations in Peru. It went great! Both the ladies that interviewed us didn’t know a bit about the SE but after the interview they were quite proud that two Peruvians were in the project. And they liked it so much that we are going to return in february!

Unfortunately with only 30 minutes we didn’t have enough time to explain the whole concept of the space elevator, and use some numbers so the public could understand why are we going to build it; but there were interesting questions that we expected. For example, what were our comments about UFO and ET technology, which JL answered since he is quite an expert answering them (for the record, we don’t believe on it and we don’t use ET technology, it’s hard-working human sweat).

The one I was expecting was the 9/11 scenario but no one asked it. Maybe it was because of the small window of time we had for answering each question.

Now, I have to hear to my friends feedback on how they perceived it. I hope I didn’t sound like Doc Brown, hehe.

Finally, I want to make public “thank you” to Luis Bolaños for contacting us with the program. Gracias mano!

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Last year I bought this book through Amazon, but before I give my opinion, let’s go back to 2001. In 2001 I was working in the Space Elevator project as part of the HighLift Systems team. After the company ran out of funds and was unable to raise more money, I started to wonder what failed.

I didn’t find the answer until 2005, when my responsibilities in Hewlett-Packard changed and had a crash course on finances and law. It was then when I realized that the main hurdles of the Space Elevator were not technical, but financial and regulatory.

Financial because the Space Elevator requires a multi-billion dollar investment during 20+ years, with an unknown market and unknown profits; and regulatory because it required changes in maritime, air and space law. Aka, a very interesting challenge (and as you can see from my current Space Elevator posts, I like challenges)

With that know-how at hand, I read this book, and I can say it is the kind of book I would have written in 2001 (which I actually did, but on the colonization of Mars).

If you are looking for a high level description of the potential of a private space tourism industry, then this is the book for you. But if you are looking for a “down to Earth” investment plan for space tourism…mmm, I don’t know where you should look. Maybe use Earth tourism industry as a framework.

Some time since I posted something so it’s about time. First, the disclaimer.

Although the llama is considered our national animal, we must say that we, the Peruvian branch of LPG, didn’t have anything to do with it’s election as Liftport’s mascot. Is a mere coincidence of which we are proud of.

Locally little has happened, only more reunions with the university regarding the thesis. And I must admit that I have been a bit out of the loop with the space industry news. Ok, I know that the Chinese launched their second manned mission and that the third space tourist landed safely couple of days ago, but haven’t heard any Space Show’s, Planetary Radio or read Space Ref column’s. So I have a lot to catch up in the following months (but I finished Red Mars, again, and started Green Mars)

As a reminder, the top 3 priorities right now are the radio interview, the school talks and the web’s translation to Spanish. Aka, SE awareness.

Mmm, we should change our post from LARC to LAPR: Latin America Public Relations. Well, experience show’s us that your job title is only a fraction of all the stuff you end doing.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftports’ blog.

After 8 months, 4 interviews, and a lot of calls and emails, the article on LPG and the SE was published on Etiqueta Negra. It is a great article, it covers a lot of aspects of the alt.space industry and explains, in layman terms, what the SE is about.

If you live in a spanish talking country, you may find the magazine for aprox. US$ 5. I strongly recommend you but it and read it.

Argh! Is 11+pm down here and I have a long day tomorrow. I wanted to give my insights on the things I have learned recently regarding business on the space industry but that blog entry will have to wait.

Good night to everyone.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.

Yesterday I gave a 2 hour talk regarding my thesis to the local SF chapter here in Peru. As I said, all photos, no words in the PPT presentation. But they were like 35 pictures. I have to reduce them to 5 since I only have 15 minutes to present the thesis at the jury.

Although I didn’t talk the whole 2 hours (there were a lot of questions and opinions by the attendees), they really flew by. It was different than when I talk about the SE. In the case of the SE I have been talking about it for 3 years. I have even learned how to explain it to different audiences and in only a few minutes. Talking only about the launch industry, was different. I have to learn how to focus.

The funny thing was that I found myself saying that using rocket technology was not going to give us cheap access to space and that we were pretty much stranded down here. The only way to go was, the space elevator or antigravity. And it remembered me an interview Dr. Space made to Brad Edwards like 3 years ago (after Brad said that, David Livingston invited the founder of American Antigravity).

Anyway, it was great to do it. I hope that soon I will be able to give a talk only about the SE. Of course, I will do it after I really finish presenting the thesis and after reading all those papers from the 3rd SE conference I haven’t read yet.

*This entry was originally posted in Liftport’s blog.