A few days ago, (23 July 2020), the National Space Council – at the White House – issued a fascinating document.  “A New Era for Space Exploration and Development.”
 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/A-New-Era-for-Space-Exploration-and-Development-07-23-2020.pdf
 
This new policy is significant.  This policy will have ripple effects in the future.  It will influence the commercial, civil, academic, and defense space sectors – for years to come. This kind of national policy shift is part of the new ‘adventure’ of building systems for space.  (They are not usually this big, and they don’t usually come this quickly.  There have been 3 big policy documents released in the past month!)
 
Lately, these changes are being considered and deliberated (by some very smart people) over the course of a few months, and then enacted.  Honestly, it is both refreshing, and it also requires us to modify our overarching plans.
 
We have posted two other videos on this policy.  We will post several more videos; we will deep-dive into the specifics and nuance that such a document deserves. 
 
In this post, we will look at the background papers that support and inform this current document.  In DC, you don’t usually have a clean-sheet new policy.  Most documents are built on layers upon layers of prior rules, papers, or laws.  This doc is no different – however, there doesn’t seem to be as thick a layer of supporting docs as most.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons it seems ‘new.’ 
 
And we will look into some key phrases that might (or might not) be “Easter eggs” – hidden details that have special significance to the writers; hidden details that might give us clues as to the author’s mindset and motivations.
 
This deep dive into national policy will become a regular feature of our Channel.  This stuff matters: all the decisions we make, internally, must be anchored in the reality of Washington DC’s priority matrix.  One of the reasons we decided to restart the company was – precisely – because of the international attention that the Moon is getting these days.  Stay tuned!
 
(In the video, I reference Ken Murphy’s paper on the CisLunar EconoSphere.  It’s here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2027/1 and https://thespacereview.com/article/2033/1)

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Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group

Last Thursday, (23 July 2020), the National Space Council – at the White House – issued a fascinating document.  “A New Era for Space Exploration and Development.”
 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/A-New-Era-for-Space-Exploration-and-Development-07-23-2020.pdf
 
This new policy is significant.  We are shifting our production schedule regarding the Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure to share it with our community.  This kind of national policy shift is part of the new ‘adventure’ of building systems for space. 
 
Lately, these changes are being considered and deliberated (by some very smart people) over the course of a few months, and then enacted.  Honestly, it is both refreshing, and it also requires us to modify, occasionally, on our overarching plans.
 
In the case of this new policy, it has wide-ranging implications. 
 
Policy topics of this video include:

• Low Earth Orbit Commercialization
• Industrial Scale Commercial Space Activities
• Changing Definition of Leadership
• Multi-Agency Governmental Roles in Space

 
This deep dive into national policy will become a regular feature of our Channel.  This stuff matters: all the decisions we make, internally, must be anchored in the reality of Washington DC’s priority matrix.  One of the reasons we decided to restart the company was – precisely – because of the international attention that the Moon is getting these days.  Stay tuned!

Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group

Yesterday, (23 July 2020), the National Space Council – at the White House – issued a fascinating document.  “A New Era for Space Exploration and Development.”
 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/A-New-Era-for-Space-Exploration-and-Development-07-23-2020.pdf
 
This new policy is so significant that we are shifting our regular production schedule regarding the Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure to share it with our community.  This kind of national policy shift is part of the new ‘adventure’ of building systems for space.  Things happen, more quickly, now.  It used to take several years for substantive shifts in national policy to work its way down to our level.  Lately, these changes are being considered and deliberated (by some very smart people) over the course of a few months, and then enacted.  Honestly, it is both refreshing, and it also requires us to modify, occasionally, on our overarching plans.
 
In the case of this new policy, it has wide-ranging implications.  This policy will not only affect the United States, and our civil, Defense, and commercial space sector, I believe it will also have impacts on the global space community.  There is some new stuff here that will have ripple effects far into the future. 
 
Over the weekend, we will dissect this 23-page document and come back, Monday, with some key takeaways. 
 
This deep dive into national policy will become a regular feature of our Channel.  This stuff matters: all the decisions we make, internally, must be anchored in the reality of Washington DC’s priority matrix.  One of the reasons we decided to restart the company was – precisely – because of the international attention that the Moon is getting these days.  Stay tuned!
​
Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group

Since last week, we’ve been coming to the office at 7:00 am. I like that we can post videos early and for some reason, it feels like we are more productive. On the other hand, I have been sleeping fewer hours and by Friday I did not feel productive any more. I really have to re-program my body to sleep earlier, otherwise, this plan won’t work on me.

This week I have been comfortably using both Linux Mint and Windows, on different partitions. I solved most of the problems but sadly It looks like my Bluetooth mouse has to be unpaired and paired to the laptop every time I change OS. It’s not so difficult but it takes some time. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with my setup.

I’m using a more advanced video editing software designed for Windows. It’s definitely more powerful than Kdenlive but it is not as intuitive as I hoped. Not that difficult either, I just have to get used to the new interface. I like that it has so many good features but I hate the very long rendering time. I still can change to other software but I will need a very good reason for that, since this one may be one of the best ones out there.

Also, being that we didn’t film more than 2 videos this week, I had the time to work on accounting. I basically finished sorting by year but I know I may have to go back and organize it even more.
​
Michael had a lot of meetings this week. Apparently, many things are happening around the space industry. Could this be the early stage of a global boom or bubble, just like in IT? That would be interesting, we’ll see.

​Fabio

The future is murky.  How realistic is it to try to describe a potential future in space?  (Just a year ago… how many of you imagined that the world would be encircled by a virus?)  So, trying to decide how the future will unfold over the next 15 years is challenging.  In this video, LiftPort seeks to showcase who the players are and what they are aiming at.  We list the six most significant elements of the newly developing cislunar EconoSphere, and we try to describe, in chronological sequence, how these entwined and mutually supporting technologies will unfold.
 
In order, they are:

1. Launch, Communications, and Earth Observations
2. In-Space Transit
3. Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure
4. Space Stations
5. Mining + Manufacturing
6. Space-Based Solar Power (And energy!)

 
This is the second of two parts of this video.

Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group

​It’s been several years since we posted videos regularly.  A LOT has changed since then. We’re back in business, and we’re doing some terrific work!  Please join us on this journey!  There is a bold adventure ahead of us; we’d like to share our progress, to share our defeats and our wins, we’d like to share the story of where we’ve been, where we’re going, and what we’re doing now.
 
We’re committing to 100 videos!  These videos will cover a range of topics: hardware of the Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure and many of the components, the highs and lows of our LiftPort history, and how we think the future of humanity will unfold as the world develops infrastructure for the cislunar EconoSphere.  We will delve into fiction and non-fiction books that help us learn what we need to learn – to build a better Elevator.  We will explore pop culture, space commercialization, and we’ll interview and meet interesting people that are involved with US Space Force, International Space University, and some of LiftPort’s Technical Advisory Council.   
 
Together, we will create the future.  Together, we’ll prove that this dream can become a reality; that new reality will change the world!  Together, we’ll discover the problems and the solutions toward building
“The biggest thing, ever!”

Michael Laine
President, LiftPort Group

We got some brand-new equipment delivered. All for the purpose of improving our video quality. We now have less excuses to deliver something good to our audience.

We applied new corrections and made public most of our videos. It seems reception wasn’t as bad as I initially thought. But still, very few people are watching our videos even after promoting through social media and that’s probably only the all-time fans. What can be the problem? Well, first of all, I think there are not too many people interested in the space as we would like. It certainly is getting on the news a lot more frequently, but still is a small target audience compared to other fields. Also, our social media network is still small. We need more new fans! Is our content boring or too long? Is our video quality so bad that is actually a deterrent for new viewers?  I don’t know. I really wish to get some feedback through the comments section. So far, someone complained about the audio being annoying because of the buzz, but we might have corrected that already.

So, what if we actually drag new people not only to our channel but to this field? In my opinion, that would be an awesome accomplishment! What do we need for that? I’m not sure. I feel like this can be nearly impossible, but worth trying. At this point, it is very likely our content isn’t adequate for zero-knowledge-of-space people. I will have to deeply think about this.
​
However, not everything is bad news. We might have created a specialty network. We have received some proposals and support from interesting people. That can be even more beneficial than our original plan. We just have to remain optimist and make our best effort to evolve as a company, whatever our path is.

​Fabio

This week was lots of fun. We made a small trip to Oregon and enjoyed a day tubing down the River. We started the journey inflating the tubes with our own mouths because we had no automatic air pump.

Then we walked down the river and jumped into the water. Water was warm-cold and it wasn’t a problem before the 3rd hour into the water. I felt really cold by the end of our course. Luckily, I didn’t get sick after that. After a day I realized, some parts of my body were burnt from the sun exposure and had some small bruises from bumping into rocks. Even considering that, it was a great experience. I would love to repeat it but only if the time on the water is reduced to half of that.

About the new media company, we have several videos on hold on the YouTube channel, just waiting for final approval and social media updates. We did make a lot of corrections, but hey that’s part of the learning process. Hopefully, we’ll get a good audience reception.

I’m definitely changing my video editing software though. I’m really curious what features are better on Adobe. Is it really a super advanced professional environment? We’ll see. It’s a big deal since I migrated to Linux and I would have to go back to Windows or partition my already small SSD. It’s probably a good idea to just partition it, so I get both OS for whenever I need it. But to be honest, I’m a little disappointed of Ubuntu. I thought It was one of the most stable versions of Linux out there. And that’s not my case, at least not in my laptop. At this point I’m really curious about macOS, though. Would it be better than Ubuntu? Better than Windows? Better than both? To try that in a good way, I guess I would have to pay the “Apple price”, so It won’t be anytime soon. Anyway, that’s not relevant at this moment.
​
By the end of this week, after making public some of our videos, we had several hundred views. It’s a decent result but our goal is still far from accomplishment. We just have to remain positive and aim to an even higher video quality.

​Fabio

There were several events at LiftPort this week. Michael told us that we could observe the comets in the northwest sky. After work, Michael took us to Chambers Bay and saw a beautiful sunset and the comet together. After sunset, the comet was dimly visible due to the light cloud and nearby light. But Gwen found the comet and told us where it was and took great pictures in night mode. I had bet with Westies about who would take the better shot of the comet. I could win the bet with Westies because the pictures taken by Gwen were so clear. I hope they don't see this blog. I saw a comet with my eyes for the first time in my life. I was so grateful to Michael and Gwen for making this precious experience.

So far, I've created the intro and outro of every video that goes into the company's YouTube channel. Their styles and graphic designs have been stood, so they no longer require much work. Now I'm starting to look for a program that has the perfect features that can be used in Windows to do video editing with Fabio. The DaVinci Resolve has almost all the functions needed to edit the video without having to install other programs together. In particular, I was sure that this would be a great help to the video taken in the office because it could be a color correction and noise cancellation. Above all, the best advantage of DaVinci Resolve is free. But I couldn't find a manual of how to use the program on the website because it was for professionals to use. I learned how to use the program by studying the usage video uploaded by other people on YouTube. I want our channel subscribers to feel our video was clear.
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This Friday, Michael's brother and all of the LiftPort Group employees went to the south of Portland for tubing in the river. It is my first outdoor activity since I started my internship in March. I was so frustrated that I couldn't go anywhere because of the COVID-19, but this outdoor activity relieved my stress a lot. We ate lunch on the way and played with tubing for 6 hours. The river was not too cold to swim and the scenery was beautiful. I was so grateful to Michael for driving for more than 6 hours and doing a fun tubing.

Byungik Jung

I created a page in the Notion to find the verbs associated with the three words we set up last week. Selected verbs will be applied to many images and will play an important role in expressing our identity. There were more words than we thought, so we couldn't decide in a day.

I chose the music for the intro and outro video and edited the wrong parts. It was a little bit burden to me because the video I made goes to the beginning and end of all the videos. By referring to and copying the videos on YouTube, I have made videos of various styles to highlight our style.

On Wednesday, we decided to change the location of the green screen, and then we moved the screen to various locations to test whether the video was working well. The biggest problem was the noise. Our office has a building elevator control room and stairs to the roof, and the noise from there was quite disturbing. The location was well lighted and good for Michael to see the slide screen, but there was still noise. We couldn't satisfy all the situations, but we decided that the location could make better video quality than before. Due to the large screen size, we moved all the chairs and desks in the office to the center and organized the electrical wires.

We added a narration that Michael explains to the GCU video posted on the LiftPort channel. It wasn't in the original shooting plan, but we added it to the filming schedule because we can produce the video easily and quickly using the data we have. Michael made a PPT slide for the video and recorded his voice. I made a bridge video that will go into the middle of several videos and uploaded it to my company OneDrive account. I applied the sound recorded by Michael to the video, but it was a bit awkward. The quality of the video was not good, so we decided to film it again. I uploaded the video we created in the OneDrive account B-Roll folder.
​
The next day, we filmed the GCU video that we decided to revise again. I searched and copied the PowerPoint animation making videos on YouTube and applied it to our video. Since most of the programs that I want to use in Windows OS require high computer specifications, so I mainly made videos using PowerPoint.

​Byungik Jung