The Alliance for Commercial Enterprises in Space (ACES) in collaboration with the NASA Ames Space Portal hosted an Entrepreneurial Space Summit.  The event was held on May 17th and 18th at the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, California with a reception on the evening of May 16th.  This Summit was designed to define the next five years of global entrepreneurial space continuing our efforts to identify partnership opportunities involving funded new and emerging government and commercial space programs and enterprises.  At this summit we:

• Updated the “Friendly Front Door” government role in entrepreneurial space through the AMES Space Portal (http://spaceportal.arc.nasa.gov),
• Introduced global warming related entrepreneurial space, and key leaders of the NSF funded National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and European Global Measurements for Ecology and Security (GMES) to explain how commercial companies and universities can work with their national programs and Told about new opportunities such as the State of Hawaii’s PISCES initiative and other Hawaiian and international space initiatives,
• Let entrepreneurial space leaders such as Ecliptic CEO Rex Ridenoure tell how they successfully partnered with NASA and
• Provided an update on the NASA Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) with a presentation by Doug Comstock, NASA HQ, IPP Director.

The California Space Grant Foundation gave a $500.00 grant to the Madison High School, San Diego California, FIRST Robotics Team. The grant was given during the AIAA San Diego Section Awards Dinner at which the Madison Devil Ducky students displayed their robot to the members attending the dinner. The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The Madison team participated in the 2007 San Diego regional contest and the National Competition in Atlanta. For more information about the Madison HS USFIRST Team go to http://www.madison.sandi.net/Robotics/html/.

This event will be held on May 17th and 18th at the NASA Research Park at Moffett Field, California with a reception on the evening of May 16th. http://www.alliancespace.net

Congressional Visits Day is a chance for the over 35,000 members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics to add their voices to the issues and concerns facing the U.S. Aerospace industry today. Team San Diego was composed of Phil Smith (San Diego Section Senior Member) and Christine Fanchiang (MIT Student member, originally from the Bay Area). We met with Gary Kline, science and technology legislative assistant to Brian Bilbray, with Michael Harrison, senior science and technology legislative assistant to Duncan Hunter, with Karen Foster, science and technology legislative aid to Bob Filner and Daniel Hazard, science and technology legislative assistant to Susan Davis. Congresswoman Davis joined the meeting near the end. San Diego has a great many aerospace firms seeking high skills engineering and technical workforce. Education and the workforce were prominent concerns in our discussions with Congressional staffers. For more information go to www.aiaa-sd.org or www.aiaa.org.

Today a Science and Technology Resource Center team received their first delivery of used goods from the San Diego Convention Center.  The San Diego Convention Center, as park of their green program, sets aside useable teacher treasures left behind by convention exhibitors.  STTRC volunteers collect, sort, shelve and display these teacher treasures for pick up after school and Saturdays.  This also happens in government and commercial offices whenever an annual marketing campaign ends, companies merge, change their names or decide to leave behind materials when they move.

For more information contact Ms. Sharon Freeburn at sfreeburn@csgf.org

California Space Grant Staff and Volunteers participated in the FIRST ROBOTICS Las Vegas Regional Robotics Contest.   Mr. Philip Smith volunteered as a Judge, Mr. Dana Barnes, Ms. Deborah Barnes, Ms. Terry Smith, Mr. Ed Danly and Ms. Lin Danly volunteered performing game queuing, robot inspection, crowd control and greeting guests.  The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.  The 2007 Las Vegas Regional featured teams from Louisiana, northern California, Arizona, Florida, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, San Diego, Las Vegas, North Dakota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and The Netherlands.  For more information go to:  www.usfirst.org.

County of San Diego has awarded a Grant in the amount of $20,000 to support our Science and Technology Resource Center.  The Community Projects program provides grants to community organizations for furtherance of public purposes at the regional and community levels throughout San Diego County.

The Science and Technology Teacher Resource Center will be: 1) a “distribution center” where San Diego County teachers can secure free classroom materials that would normally be thrown away at the end of conferences and conventions; 2) a “library/resource center” for educators who want to learn about and order science and technology curriculum materials created by various government agencies (e.g. NASA); 3) a “meeting place” for professional gatherings and teacher professional development workshops.

For more information contact Ms. Sharon Freeburn at sfreeburn@csgf.org

California Space Grant Staff and Volunteers participated in the FIRST Robotics San Diego Regional Robotics Contest.   Mr. Philip Smith, Mrs. Terry Smith, Mr. Ed Danly and Ms. Lin Danly volunteered performing game queuing, robot inspection, crowd control and greeting guests.  The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way.  The 2007 San Diego Regional featured teams from northern California, Hawaii, San Diego, Los Angeles, the High Desert, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Idaho.   The VIP Luncheon was attended by Dr. Paul Jacobs, Supervisor Greg Cox, Mayor of Chula Vista Cheryl Cox and Dale Amorosia from Assemblywoman Mary Salas’s office.  For more information go to www.usfirst.org.

Key CSGF Team members moved into the San Diego STTRC site over the weekend.  The Science and Technology Teacher Resource Center will be:

• a “distribution center” where San Diego County teachers can secure free classroom materials that would normally be thrown away at the end of conferences and conventions;
• a “library/resource center” for educators who want to learn about and order science and technology curriculum materials created by various government agencies (e.g. NASA);
• a “meeting place” for professional gatherings and teacher professional development workshops.  We plan to open the San Diego STTRC to teachers in the Fall of 2007.

For more information contact Ms. Sharon Freeburn at sfreeburn@csgf.org