No taping allowed… but for you? Ok.

The International Conference on Energy from Space 2024 held last week at the headquarters of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London followed the protocols of a high-end professional gathering by not doing fireworks, laserlight spreads for walkouts or rows of streaming cameras. This is a good thing for a conference of this type where you want the people to be completely comfortable and openly candid.

But. SSI has this thing about recording as much as we may because we are old enough to know that sometimes what feels in the moment like just another day at the office can, years later, be of some value for re-presenting.

We are not saying that this particular little SSI talk will ever go down in any history, but SSI was there and it was a moment in time.

We thank the organizers of the conference for the permission to record – and we *really* thank them for the invitation to play a part. We are pretty far away and to be thought of helped some of us feel like all of the volunteering in support of this important topic over the years had not gone unnoticed.

Before you hit play on the video, please skim the following paragraph of credits with the awareness that every single one of these organization names is actually a representation of real people; Real faces, real hands, real hearts. Real people who are are, like you, working very hard to make our world a better place to live.

Great Job Sanjay and the folks at ESA Solaris, the European Space Agency’s big office, the UK Space Agency, JAXA, the Department for Energy and Net Zero, the Space Energy Initiative, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, Space Solar, International Electric Company Limited (Ian, Ho. Ly. Cow.) the members the European Parliament and the UK Parliament, Thales Alenia Space, Arthur D. Little, Artemis Innovation Management Solutions, Blue Origin, Avance Labs, DARPA, Catapult, the Imperial College, Virtus Solis… the list goes on and on.

Real people. And you can get the program to see everyone’s real name, and what they are really working on, right here:

https://www.aerosociety.com/media/23491/programme-final-v2-energy-from-space-17-19-april-2024.pdf

What it comes down to is this: To the good folks who put this event together and who made it run like clockwork while not ever being stiff and boring or just a typical space ad-fest, to the people who worked hard not only to write up their presentations and be ready to present but also to have the actual tangibles behind them so that this was not just a bunch of ‘gee-it-would-be-nice’ sessions. And to the people who were in the pews – No, that’s not right, make that “The People who were in both Physical And Mental Attendance” – SSI sincerely says “Well Done.”

post-mortem lesson-learned: Even if you’re nervous, if there is a message that is bigger than you, it is your responsibility to put it out.

And with that, this:

The International Conference on Energy from Space 2024, organised in partnership with the Royal Aeronautical Society, UK Department for Energy Net Zero, UK Space agency and ESA, and with support from the Space Energy Initiative. The conference was sponsored by Sirin Orbital Systems AG, Rovial Space and Frazer-Nash Consultancy.

For more, much more, on Solar Power Satellites, see this special section on ssi.org