THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SPACE BUSINESS

A special report on NASA's Inaugural Small Business Solutions Conference held in New York City. Pictured here is a proposed design for NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle to help send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and Beyond.

NASA Lands In New York City On Small Business Mission By Harold Egeln New York City, Tuesday, September 6, 2005 -- It was a lot of small business steps and a giant leap for NASA, as the nation's space agency held a Small Business Solutions Conference in the city's theatrical district, its first ever here, adding the Big Apple to its official Moon, Mars and Beyond space policy vision. Four of the space shuttle Discovery astronauts, Colonel Eileen Collins, the mission commander, and mission specialists Charles Camarda from Queens, Soichi Noguchi and Stephen Robinson, were on hand, in the city for various events to discuss their recent orbital mission, the first shuttle flight since the Columbia tragedy of February 1, 2003. "We have landed!" said the NASA officials and astronauts in their welcome to several hundred business leaders from across the nation as NASA's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) not only sought to inform them of how they can contribute to the U.S.'s new Space Vision, but to establish a stronger NASA space base in the city. "I am a native of this city," said Lamont Hames, OSDBU's Chief of Staff and Program Manager for Science, proudly noting that his family was from Brooklyn and stating NASA's partnership aim for the city's small businesses, seeking a successful link-up. For NASA's mission, billing its conference as "Big Ideas in the Big Apple," it put together a dozen workshops led by industry executives, small business leaders and NASA business resource people, along with networking and one-on-one sessions, and a hall of exhibitors. "NASA is very bullish on small business," said Hames, speaking at a breakfast and later at a panel. "We want to bring business to New York City... The space agency has become much more entrepreneural.' Small businesses, he emphasized, can provide innovations and are a prime component of NASA's infrastructure, with minority and women owned businesses composing 35 percent of the small businesses which work with NASA and its ten field centers. All the centers were represented by their small and minority business specialists at the conference. "In New York City, it's said, 'location, location, location,' From you, we want solutions, solutions, solutions." NASA was welcomed by city and state officials. "This event speaks volumes about the committment here to us," said Glenis Henriquez, Director of External Affairs for the Department of Small Business Services, giving greetings from Commissioner Robert Walsh. "The Department of Small Business Services will work side by side with NASA." In pledging to promote NASA's mission throughout the city, Henriquez noted that there are over 200,000 small businesses in the city. It should be noted that the city has businesses which already work with NASA, such as Honeybee Robotics in Manhattan that provided the Mars Opportunity and Spirit rovers' Rock Abrasion Tools for drilling and at Columbia University which is home to NASA's Goddard Space Studies, among other connections. Speaking for the state was James Harding, Director of Legislative Affairs for the Governor's Office, pledging the state's proactive help. "Together we are making a difference in the world." Plans for the conference in the city started taking shape last November based on a "dream" idea by Hames a year ago, with a planning meeting this past January. "In doing business within NASA, it's not just about a check, but you give a piece of your heart," said Ralph Thomas III, NASA Associate Administrator at OSDBU who represents NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on all small business matters. NASA has five mission goals towards accomplishing its Moon, Mars and Beyond mandate, Thomas noted, first with the Return to Flight of the nation's shuttle fleet and the recent Discovery test mission. The other four are completing work on the International Space Station, now only 40 percent finished; the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle to replace the shuttle fleet when its mission ends in 2010; the establishment of a Moon colony, which Thomas noted that many businesses present are involved in already; and human missions and outposts on Mars. Thomas noted public interest in the space program, with NASA's website getting the highest number of hits when NASA's rovers landed on Mars in January 2004, with millions of hits every day for awhile. "THE COSMIC SEDUCTION" MISSION With the human energy equivelent of a space rocket, astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, told of what the city can contribute to NASA's taking humans into deep space. "That's what New York City does best -- capital markets," said Tyson, born and raised in the Bronx, with his parents present at the conference luncheon. "What we want to do is to transform the space program into a space industry." "NASA gives you money. Now you do something else with the patent," said Tyson of the challenge NASA is presenting to the city's small businesses. "Innovation always comes from small companies. NASA knows that you are intellectually mobile." The benefits for space exploration, Tyson said, have been applied many times over to the benefit of Earth, economically and humanly, as he cited companies which may come up with a workable terraforming of Mars, and using "the technique to reach into a hurricane and shut it off." Before coming to this point of his keynote address, Tyson presented his deep concerns about the nation losing jobs to overseas markets, the rise of science illiteracy, and the slow pace or lack of advanced space technologies. Although he did not mention other enterprising private commercial space efforts, such as Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne's successful suborbital's flights, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism plans nor David Gump's t/Space plans for a crew transfer spaceship launched from a very large aircraft (see October's "Popular Science" cover story by Michael Belfiore for the t/Space article), Tyson was tapping into a large reservoir of discontent with the lack of advanced technologies for crewed flights deeper into space. As one conference attendee said, the home computer has advanced rapidly and dramatically in 25 years, but not so with new space launch technologies. "Since 1972 we've been doing a alot of going around the block in low Earth orbit," Tyson noted of the end of the Apollo Moon missions and trips of only over a couple of hundred miles into constant orbits since with crewed flights. "That's the distance from here to Boston." Tyson mentioned his role on the U.S. Space Policy Panel, a group of 12 space industry, educators and science leaders which toured the country early last year and held hearings in major cities, including this city in May 2004. And he told how, at the direction of the presidential administration, the panel presented ideas and recommendations to help the nation and NASA to formulate the new Space Policy Vision to the Moon, Mars and Beyond to move humans beyond the earth carousel rides. "I like that vision," he told the business crowd. "Now, when I stand up before eighth graders, I can say, 'You might be the first persons to design the first aircraft to fly on Mars.'" "Without a vision, there's no place to land," he continued, talking about the state of the space program before the new policy was put in place. "I think we lost a whole generation... We were coasting so blindly. We were going backwards by standing still." Today, with the nation equipped with a bold new offical space policy, Tyson sees a new era of innovation. For that, he said, "I credit NASA 100 percent," adding that "what we're asking of the universe requires a crossing of many disciplines: partical physics, astrophysics, astrobiology, astrochemistry. That cross pollination process is so significant, it can transform the way science gets done." When Congress passed Bill 37, the National Authorization Act of 2005, Tyson noted, "they restored Earth sciences, endorsed the Space Vision, the Hubble Telescope, the Crew Exploration Vehicle, all by a vote of 383 to 15. That's bipartisenship. That's a triumph!" "Now we can ask of our school children, who are the pure essence of inquiry, about finding life in the soil of Mars, in the oceans of Europe," Tyson said, noting that NASA can "now draw every single scientific frontier into its vision... We can get attracted by Mars, Europa, Alpha Centuri. That's the cosmic seduction!"

Astronauts and Cosmic Solutions In New York NASA's "four star" power for the conference was the appearance of its four Discovery STS 114 mission astronauts, talking from the breakfast dais. "Our hearts were beating real fast, but they did a really great job on this," said Commander Collins, a native New Yorker from Elmira, about the launch. She narrated a short Return To Flight video highlighting the test mission to the International Space Station and the subsequent spacewalk repair jobs on the shuttle's surface. Noting the still remaining problem with foam from the shuttle boosters, which has again grounded the aging shuttle fleet until at least March 2006, Col. Collins noted the "Solutions" word in the conference title. "Solutions. That word hit home to me," she said, displaying confidence in NASA resolving its shuttle problems. "I now believe there are ways we can repair any damage. I look at all the work, with a lot of hours put into it. What a great team... It's not easy, but we can make it safe." Although the fallen foam chunk was very troublesome, Col. Collins said that while the media focused on the flight's problems, much did work on the orbital flight. "There are two-and-a-half-million parts to the shuttle. They worked perfectly. This orbiter did what it is supposed to do. It's a fantastic credit to the teamwork." When asked about their possible roles in the planned missions to the Moon and Mars, mission specialist Soichi said, "The Moon! We all want to go! Spaceflight offers nonstop excitement, just like staying in New York City." Two days before the astronauts met a large group of school children at the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space and that night Col. Collins was a guest on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman for a fascinating conversation, and they attended a baseball game on Wednesday. Among the variety of exhibitors at the NASA conference making the space program work on and for Earth was the Space Alliance Technology Outreach Program (SATOP), a NASA funded program based in Syracuse, which has dealt with a city service operated by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. "We connected NASA's SATOP technical problem-solvers to help provide ideal soundproofing for a ballet studio," said Rick Russo, Director of the Brooklyn office of the city's Business Solutions Center and Chamber Vice President for Business Services. He mentioned the NASA-connected SATOP at a recent Chamber event. "The Brooklyn Chamber came to their rescue," said SATOP Regional Director Larry Kalish, who liaisons with the Chamber. The studio was actually in the Albany area, but the Solutions Center run by the Chamber was the contact point. "We make services available to strengthen small businesses facing technical challenges," said SATOP Director Beth Bornick. SATOP offers up to 40 free hours of engineering help for qualified requests, drawing upon the expertise of NASA and and SATOP's Alliance Partners, resulting, she said, "in numerous success stories." Relating a down-to-Earth success story not of space to this reporter was Tommy Osborne, Chief Technology Officer for Maden Technologies in Arlington, Virginia. When his parents, Mary Dell Taylor Osborne and Ulysses Sanford Osborner lived in Brooklyn in the mid-1960s, they were among the leaders of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville struggle for local community control of school boards. Given a copy of "Brooklyn's Progress," the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce's newspaper, he was delighted to see the front page article about a new home improvement center project under construction in Brownsville. There was much emphasis, as noted, on the role of minority and women owned small businesses at the conference, held in a city rich with those resources which NASA has in its small business telescope sights, building a cosmic bridge with New York City's five boroughs. Attending from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency in Manhattan was Ronald Uba, Business Development Specialist. In a morning session with the media, led by Hames and Thomas, two leaders of such minority-owned aerospace businesses in the room were identified as being prime examples of the high quality standards NASA seeks in working with its contractors and subcontractors. The presidents/CEOs were Joe Fuller of Futron in Maryland and Wendell Maddox of Ion Corporation in Minnesota. Futron was involved in NASA's Return to Flight Initiative (the first big step in the Moon, Mars and Beyond program), working with NASA's Langley Research Center, looking at risk management procedures and guidelines, said Thomas. "NASA has been increasing the dollars it awards to women-owned small businesses in both prime and subcontract dollars year after year at a remarkable rate," wrote Thomas in "Women Contractors at NASA," an OSDBU publication. Between FY 1992 and FY 2002, he noted, NASA contract funds skyrocketed from $219 million to $743 million for women-owned small businesses. Among National Space Society (NSS) New York Chapter members attending the conference was a chapter leader who works with a city-based space business service. Space reporter and technical writer Greg Zsidisin, a mechanical engineer by training, is the newly elected chapter president, as well as a founder and contributing editor of AstroExpo.com, a New York City-based space industry and technology information service. Zsidisin, during a previous chapter presidency, chaired the NSS's annual International Space Development Conference in the city a decade ago. To inform conference goers of all of NASA's OSDBU's resources, workshop topics included NASA's IT systems and enterprise architecture, effective terming agreement principles, NASA procurement trends, NASA's Source Evaluation Board, corporate small business programs, advanced marketing strategies, advanced life support research, and the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) programs. Among other workshops was a session with cast members of the TV hit show, "The Apprentice." With the "Cosmic Seduction" provided by NASA's daring new space policy vision, Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium had told of the need to explain the dynamics and importance of the new far outward direction of the piloted space program. "The best way to go is through the opportunity that comes out of small business." "It's in the NASA Space Act which enables small business to fulfill a role," he said, which allows NASA to benefit from a large segment of private industry. Of NASA's budget, 31.5 percent goes to the minority and women owned industries that it contracts with to make the space program happen, it was noted at a press conference on what NASA and its prime contractors are seeking from small businesses. "NASA is seeking a niche in New York City," said Hames at the opening breakfast session. He then told the business people, "You are the stockholders who can make life better on Earth through space... I look forward to your progress reports at the next Business Solutions Conference in New York City one year from now." Houston: Big Apple Small Business Base here. NASA has landed in New York City. For more information on NASA's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, based at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, visit www.osdbu.nasa.gov. *********************************************************

Courier-Life Publications reporter Harold Egeln is vice president of The New York Space Society, the New York City chapter of the National Space Society (NSS). He is also a member of The Planetary Society.

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