The New Space Race: How Data, Resources, and Power Are Shaping Our Future<\/a>,\u201d scheduled for 7pm this Thursday, March 19. The event will explore how governments and private corporations are jockeying \u201cfor technological advantage, data control, and access to resources\u201d in space; how the rapid growth of space infrastructure is outpacing both \u201clegal and international frameworks\u201d to regulate it; and what the consequences could be \u201cfor citizens, the environment, and the balance of global power.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe really do hand over the steering wheel for this one,\u201d Tank says of the event. \u201cMe and my colleagues are just there as faculty advisors. It\u2019s a phenomenal experiential learning opportunity for the students.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Much of IAF\u2019s student leadership team is new this year and will be taking on hosting duties for the first time, including team co-chairs Harrison Willow and Zinnia Burks. Willow is a music major who moved to Traverse City last year, and only discovered IAF in the fall. Burks graduated from NMC\u2019s licensed practical nurse program in December, but circled back to the college this semester to take a few more classes and get involved with IAF.<\/p>\n
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Willow and Burks, along with the other 11 members of the student leadership team (pictured), started off with a list of \u201cbetween 30 and 50 topics\u201d for the event, but the idea of doing something space-centric immediately appealed to the group.<\/p>\n
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\u201cA lot of the pre-existing interest in IAF, at least on campus, is coming from students who are in the humanities or the international topic sphere,\u201d Burks says. \u201cThis event is unique for IAF, because it poses an opportunity for students who are more interested in technology, or science, or engineering to get involved, which is a significant portion of NMC\u2019s student body. It really feels like an opportunity to reach a new audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Aimee Hubble, who will serve as the in-person speaker and interview subject for Thursday\u2019s event, goes one step further. In her eyes, the modern space race is the rare topic with implications for all.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s not just that we have more and more things in space every day; it\u2019s that more of our everyday lives are touched by space than ever before,\u201d says Hubble, who holds a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan and serves as senior project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation, a federally-funded R&D facility in Virginia. \u201cI would not be able to call you right now, with our two cell phones connected to each other, if it was not for space assets and satellites. And next week, I\u2019m going to plug my hotel address into my phone\u2019s GPS, and it\u2019s going to get me to Traverse City.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s not just satellite technology that matters. According to Hubble, some of the most revolutionary work happening in space right now diverges wildly from how most people perceive the industry.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFor example, there\u2019s actually really exciting work going on with manufacturing in space,\u201d Hubble tells The Ticker. \u201cYou can make better semiconductors if you manufacture them in the microgravity of space and then bring them back down. You can make different kinds of pharmaceuticals in space than you can down here. So, there’s a lot of exciting stuff that is in works now and will be affecting our lives in the decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For Willow, those unexpected angles of the new space race are what made it the perfect event for IAF\u2019s student leadership team to tackle.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen we were selecting our topic, we had it narrowed down to three options, with the other two being global health and regime change,\u201d Willow notes. \u201cThose two topics are familiar and pretty widely understood, but the future of space technology and the international cooperation involved in it \u2013 as well as the private financial interests at work and all the legislation that is involved \u2013 these are things that most people don\u2019t know much about, ourselves included. When we chose this topic, [Tank] encouraged us to get really well-versed in this cutting-edge area, and it ended up being so fun and fascinating to tap into the ecosystem of space policy and technology professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first space race effectively ended in 1969 when the United States put the first man on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-525311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}