Week 6 - part 2

I already wrote about Monday and Tuesday, so I'll start with Wednesday. :-)

Wednesday we had Theme Day #2. Our choices were "Why do Nations cooperate in Space?" and "Issues for Military Reconnaissance Satellites." I went to the cooperation one, and it turned out to be an excellent choice. The panelists were Peggy Finarelli - Senior Fellow in the Center for Aerospace Policy Research at George Mason University (used to work at NASA), Lynn Cline from NASA (deputy admin for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate - HEOMD), Micheline Tabache from the European Space Agency (ESA), and Ian Pryke from the National Research Council (formerly worked at ESA). Each speaker gave a short presentation followed by Q&A time. My favorite part was when Lynn talked about lessons learned from the International Space Station which is the program I support back home. Lynn's boss is Bill Gerstenmaier who I also find extremely inspiring and forward-thinking.

After that we had a Q&A session with the whole panel. The dialogue shifted from "international cooperation" to "why space," but I think the two are absolutely interconnected and it is essential to have a reason to explore space if you are going to get your government to spend money on space in the first place. The key point from the discussion can be summed up by this quote from Jean-Jacques Dordain (ESA Director General) -

“It’s not easy to cooperate,
but it’s more difficult
to succeed alone.”

After the Q&A I had a chance to ask Lynn about the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) which I am writing about in the Policy & Law Department. She was really helpful... plus the CCP is managed within her directorate at NASA. I'm just amazed to have the opportunity to meet such influential people.

After Theme Day we had our ninth Department Activity. In Policy & Law, we started the "Moot Court" which we finished Thursday. Moot Court is a law school competition which simulates court proceedings. Law students have 9 months for the project, but we had six hours. Even though it was very condensed, I learned a lot and we all had a great time. We split the class into two teams and had a debate about an imaginary satellite collision. We used the Outer Space Treaty and the 1992 UN Principles on the use of Nuclear Power Systems to defend our case.

Thursday afternoon we had time allotted to work on our department projects. Some departments did presentations, some did team projects, some individual projects or papers. For Policy & Law, we had each wrote a paper on any policy/law topic we chose. As I explained in this post, my paper is about the differences between Space Act Agreements and Federal Acquisition Regulations and pro's/con's of each on NASA's Commercial Crew Program. I worked on my paper and presentation until 1:30am (12 solid hours).

Friday, all 7 Departments finished their projects! We met at 9am for the Policy & Law presentations. We each had 15 minutes (except Tal had 35 minutes *wink, wink*) to summarize our findings. I thought all the topics were very interesting and diverse!

• Niveditha - Indian Space Agency
• Ademir - We need space law (like air and sea law)
• Types of contracts for commercial crew (me)
  
• Tale - What is the definition of "space" (how high?)
• Alejandro - Chilean Space Agency
• Rui - Definition of Launching State
• Tom - Cooperation in Space
• Tal - Satellite Jamming
• Maciej - Space Debris (liability and how to prevent more debris)
  

And...done!!! We finished before lunch. I was very pleased with my paper and presentation. Just shoot me an email if you'd like a copy. The DA was a really great experience - I thoroughly enjoyed it. I understand so much more about P&L than I did 3 weeks ago. I also really enjoyed getting to know the people in P&L. We had a small group and did lots of interactive activities, so we really got to know each other! We celebrated by going downtown for drinks and dessert. Nothing like hot Apfel Strudel with whipped cream to celebrate project completion! Here are some more pictures of the final on Facebook.



Today the final phase begins.... team project 24/7 - or 28/7 since each day at SSP has at least 28 hours... how else do you think we have this much fun each day?? We have 3 weeks left to complete our projects. Today we found out that our team received the highest grade for the letter of intent out of all 3 teams... go robots! Tonight is Cultural Night #5!! We have 5 countries presenting this time - Estonia, France, India, Poland, and Sweden. I'm looking forward to it!