Executive Director, Dr. Michael Simpson, delivers closing address at International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, NM

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Organized each year by the New Mexico Space Grant Coalition, this symposium has become a major opportunity for entrepreneurs, companies, and government to compare notes on the rapid progress being made in the field of commercial space activity.

Dr. Simpson’s address incorporated SWF themes of structured cooperation, sustainability and freedom of access while summarizing both the practical and visionary themes that presenters had evoked during the two day event.

Dr. Simpson emphasized that personal and commercial spaceflight has come a long way since the first ISPCS session in 2005.  Acknowledging  that the sector had made enormous progress in advancing both this concept and the technology behind it, he also cautioned that it would require new sources of personal and intellectual energy to continue its acceleration. “We will also need to keep getting smarter about how to communicate our successes and failures to an increasingly interested public,” he noted.  Looking back on the first 9 years of the ISPCS for inspiration, he summarized the main predictions presenters had made about what topics would excite the tenth anniversary symposium in 2014 and added a few of his own.

He concluded by enumerating several opportunities for advancing cooperation, sustainable operations, and education that not only served social goals but made good business sense as well.

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