Director: Lorraine (Rain) Glynn

THE UNIVERSE - YOURS TO DISCOVER

Doesn’t that sound exciting – and it’s true!  Our Universe is filled with enough fascinating stuff to fill billions of light years and the Dragon*Con Space Track wants to help you discover it.

Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, said -

“The dream of yesterday is the hope of today

and the reality of tomorrow”

The dream of yesterday has been the countless ages that mankind has looked into the heavens and wondered.  What are the lights in the sky?  Why do they move and yet return the same each year?  And eventually, when will we be able to go there?  The hope of today is to continue to expand our knowledge.   Commercial space ventures.  Protecting Earth from comets and asteroids.  A human presence on Mars.  Finding other Earth like planets.  The reality of tomorrow is as wide as our own imaginations.  Faster than light travel.  Terra-forming other planets.  Interacting with intelligent species from other worlds.  Parallel universes.  These are only a few of themes the Space Track has, and continues to, explore but there is so much more!

‘Space’ today encompasses almost the full spectrum of sciences and engineering.  Astronomy?  Cosmology? Sending humans into space?  Those are still relevant but now there’s also AstroPhysics, Exo-Biology, Exo-Geology, specialized photography, Astro-Navigation, Aero-engineering, propulsion technology, Astro-Chemistry, human physiology, adaptive techniques for anything and everything humans need to live off planet and the list goes on.

The scope of Space is as vast as the universe itself.  We invite you to bring us your dreams and hopes of space and we’ll tell you how they could become the realities of our future.

We are the Dragon*Con Space Track – We bring the universe to you!

Space Track 2012

Space Track celebrated its 5th year in 2012 and we did it up BIG!  Our first NASA Astronaut, Capt. William Shepherd, joined the track for talks on his experience as the 1st Commander of the International Space Station and the 'Evolution of Space Stations.’  The space station talk was fabulous for many reasons.  Not only for Capt. Shepherd's participation but he was joined by Richard Garriott, himself a visitor to the ISS as Russia's 6th Citizen Astronaut, and retired NASA Flight Controller, Sy Libergot, who was live from Worldcon in Chicago!  With Dr. June Scobee Rodgers moderating, this was an historic event for the Space Track!!

Still, it was only the first one.  The Space Track kept on swinging with a second WorldCon/Dragon*Con live event - 'Asteroid Mining'.  Again, with Dr. Scobee Rodgers moderating, Les Johnson, Richard Garriott and Stephen Fleming were joined from WorldCon by Story Musgrave, easily one of NASA's most famous Shuttle astronauts!  I count 3 track participants who have actually spent time in space as a major hit for the Space Track!

We rounded out the track with our wonderful regular guests.

Our returning JPL Cassini crew of Kim Stedman, Dr. Scott Edgington and Trina Ray not only updated us on the wonders that Cassini keeps unveiling but also gave us talks on Mars' newest rover, Curiosity, the Voyagers, Pioneers & New Horizon probes which will all leave the solar system and the Kepler exo-planets.

Dr. Pamela Gay returned, straight off a plane from China.  Her talk on 'The Earth Without a Moon' was fascinating and she later joined an all-star lineup Space Track favorites (Phil Plait, Fraser Cain, Les Johnson & Bill Keel) for 'Space Geeks', a discussion on sci-fi media and its effect on future scientists.  Speaking of Dr. Phil Plait, he once again joined Dr. Kevin Grazier for the annual Saturday night comedy panel, 'The Kevin and Phil Show.’  Although always filled with lots of laughs, this year's theme was more serious, ideas for funding Space Exploration.  Many audience members were surprised to discover that NASA is not allowed to either advertise or make any kind of profit from its discoveries.  Explains a lot, doesn't it?!

We kept rolling with Richard Garriott giving his vision for the future of the space industry.  Stephen Fleming and a crew of commercial space people who gave a full run down of what all of the largest of the commercial space companies are doing.  He also joined James Schier, a NASA Headquarters administrator and Dr. John Bradford, from SpaceWorks Engineering, to discuss what the cuts to the NASA budget will affect.  Dr. Bradford also gave a talk on some of the more outlandish projects that received (or were proposed for) funding during the height of Apollo era NASA.  His former colleague, A.C. Charania, told us all about the latest in satellite launches.  No need for rockets, nano satellites can be launched from planes!

Les Johnson was super busy this year!  Besides his time on the joint WorldCon/Dragon*Con panel and the 'Space Geeks' panel, he did a mini-workshop discussion of what it would require to actually build a a base on the Moon.  Later, he discussed the subject of his soon to be published book, what happens if we lose our satellites?  Now that was an eye opener!

Of course we had our two types of live astronomy going.  Stephen Ramsden, with his non-profit Charlie Bates Society, had his amazing solar telescope setup going.  On Friday afternoon he captured the full extent of a solar eruption that no one else, even NASA, got all of!!  It was the longest ever seen and was hundreds of thousands of miles long!  Dr. William Keel once again provided us with views from a telescope in Chile.  The images are spectacular!  Dr. Keel opened the track with a talk on the various astronomy minded tourist locations that are in the U.S. and later, with the best panel title of the year, 'Real Stars - Stranger Than Kardashians,' discussed the amazing assortment of stars that have been discovered in recent years.

With all the wonderful events of our 5th year of the Space Track, my favorite was something new this year.  Dragon*Con Eternals and Kennedy Space contractors, Steve Csori and Steve Francis, put on a NASA Themed Robotics Workshop.  It was so special we allotted 90 minutes for it and it was worth every one of those minutes!  The room was filled with kids, parents and kids of all ages.  The two Steve's showed a short video on NASA robots, brought a couple of small, but very cool robots for show and best of all, provided all who wanted them, kits to make their own robots!  The creativity was astonishing and delightful and watching all those kids build, display and be proud of their robots was the culmination of everything the Space Track is trying to achieve.  It truly was the highlight of our best Dragon*Con ever!

Visit our website for more information and what we have to offer for this year's show!