Transcripts For CSPAN2 How To Make A Spaceship 20161111

Economist george borhaus examines impact of immigration on u. S. Economy. Astro physicist, explore questions of the universe. American enterprise institutes reports on the decline in the employment of american men. And National Book Award Winning biographer recalls the life of organized crime boss al capone. That is a a few of programs you see on booktv. For the schedule, to to booktv. Org. 72 hours of nonstop books and authors this veterans day weekend. We kick off the threeday weekend with Julian Guthrie and the look at privatized spaceflight. These lovely director chairs. All right. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the Space Gallery here at museum of flight. My name is jeff nunn. I amed adjunct curator of space history here at the museum. Doing king sends his regards and regrets. He is unfortunately unavailable to be here tonight as he has taken ill. I would like to begin thanking our special featured speaker, author, Julian Guthrie and dave moore. [applause] and also the team from cspan books will be recording this evenings events and conversation for later viewing. So we have a fabulous evening in store for you tonight as part of the museums orbit around october. It is a series of space focused event throughout the month leading up to the threeday space fest, happening november 3 through the 5th. It features ladies who launch womenled talks and activity as panned nels all about space. For a complete listing of events i encourage you to take a look at the insert in the spacezine you should have received at checkin. All of this programing is part of a broader effort by museum to highlight incredible boom of activity happening in space today which the event tonight help catalyze. Most people know the seattle for airplanes, coffee and software. Were also very much involved in space. From longtime space pioneers like the boeing space center and folks at arrow jet rocketdyne, to recent comers like blue origin and ken washington working on reusable rockets. Planetary resources in red emergency. To folks at bothel who are working on in space manufacturing, the Seattle Space community is growing thriving and diverse and the museum of flight is proud and thrilled to help tell the story. So my distinct pleasure to introduce tonight as featured speaker. Author. Julian guthrie, the author of a new book, how to make a spaceship. The birth of private spaceflight. It tells the story of a cast of characters who dreamed of bringing space to the masses. That cast includes aviators, test pilots, Engineering School dropouts, nasa retirees, billionaires and particularly determined space geek to refused to give up on his outsized dream. Without further adieu, my pleasure to introduce Julian Guthrie. [applause] thank you so much for that great introduction. Were having the best day here. So this book is really interesting on many, many levels. You know, i kind of look at it now, how to make a spaceship, as almost, there is almost a formula for it. There is almost a recipe as i see it. So you start with this space geek. You start with this guy, peter dimandis. He was 8 years old when apollo 11 lands on the moon in 1969. He is wideeyed, transfixed by the magic of nasa, the magic of apollo 11. The first time man sets foot on another see less teal body, along with star trek, apollo what was possible and star trek was what could be possible. He drank all the tank and he believed in all of this and he set out on this great adventure and unbelievable quest to become an astronaut and his original pursuit was to get there through the typical channels, through nasa. He went to mit. He went to harvard. He did all of these things just so he could one day get to space. He gets out of college. He realizes that nasa is winding down the manned Space Programs or he was not that would not be the way he would get there. So what comes in next in this special recipe is a book. He reads a certain book which connects the story to golden age of aviation. He reads the spirit of st. Louis. He has this ahha moment where he is reading it. He had thought Charles Lindbergh flew the transatlantic flight as a stunt. He reads this, he is like, wow, he flew this to win this 25,000dollar prize and you know the orteg prize which really was this great incentive competition in the 1920s. He realizes Charles Lindbergh, so he wins this prize. He is the first man to fly transatlantic flight from new york to paris nonstop and connect those two major cities. And he launches the commercial space industry. What came out of that. Peter is thinking what if i could do the same thing for space . So in, its a great story, in may 1996, he under the arch in st. Louis, some of you may have been there, i have been hearing Great Stories tonight who were actually in the Mojave Desert a decade or so later. In 1996, he is under the arch in st. Louis, this prize, this 10 milliondollars prize for the first team that can build and fly a manned rocket for start of space. He has 20 astronauts. He has head of faa. He has the head of nasa but what he doesnt have 10 million. Just a small detail. So he goes out on this quest. The next part of the recipe is key he needs lipped berg. He needs only socalled flying lindbergh in the family, eric lindbergh. Theyre meeting. Erics story within this story is so profound of a man who lives with this enormous being a lindbergh and grapples how to find his own identity within the legacy. He is reluctant to get involved in the xprize. He ends up being in a way rescued bit xprize and. Really profound story. You have eric lindbergh. Next what do you need in the great recipe . You need a maverick aviation designer. You need this guy named bert ratan. He is working in the Mojave Desert and working a small team. He thinks he can build a spaceship, the worlds first private spaceship. What else do you need . You need this someone really, really disciplined Program Manager. Enter dave moore, who was working for paul allen. So again you need one more thing, you need a benefactor. Enter paul allen, the cofounder of microsoft. So he was not own hely the benefactor, he had this vision that other people couldnt necessarily see at the time. So you have all of these great components. Then what else do you need . These experimental machines . You need really intrepid test pilots. We have mike melvill, brian benny. Test pilots at scale composites. Mike melvill one of the most courageous guys i ever met. He is 63 years old first whiteknuckles the start of space in june of 2004. You have a great cast of characters. A human bravery. Peter is this, is this great conduct tore ho pulls all amazing characters into this. Persevered like few people i have ever heard of in my life. The most tenacious guy. He wins. He didnt have the 10 million. He went out and sought funding. He knocks on door after door after door. He gets told no, over 150 times. You need perseverance. You need to be very creative. Even some of his closest friend were telling him this would never work. You should give it up. It is not going to happen. He was tenacious. Persevered, he held on to his dream. Perseverance, whole tenacity, great innovation. To make all of this happen. And it came together in this really, you know, magical moment. Some of you, i was signing books telling me stories of flying out to see one of these flights in the Mojave Desert where history was made by this small team. You know that small teams can do really, really remarkable things. So all of this comes together for this moment in history. You have the a team of 30 or so people who have built the first private spaceship and replica is right above us. It is really, really. Really, really incredible thing embodies the best of human spirit. The bravery, innovation of tenacity skill of all different levels. Im so happy, so honored i got to tell this story. I get to talk about this story and this amazing story is now a great inspiration im finding and im so thrilled with that that it is, it is being embraced by this next generation. Peter dimandis when we met, he said it was gift of a book, the gift of the spirit of st. Louis that started him on this path. Hopes that how to make a spaceship will inspire the next generation of innovators and of dreamers and of doers and i just want to quickly introduce an amazing, small team of High School Students who are from north Idaho Stem Charter Academy and they, their story is so wonderful and so remarkable, if they could come up here real quickly. So they [applause] theyre from north Idaho Stem Charter Academy, and they are are, guess what . Theyre building a spaceship. Theyre building a research satellite. Guess who their hands on mentor is . None other than bert ratan. Yes, amazing. They have taken huge inspiration from the story, this story, peters story, all of folks here on stage who made this spaceship happen because it wasnt one person who made it happen. It was every person here they played a key role to make this happen. Eric lindbergh, dave moore, obviously peter, paul allen, the test pilots, those who kept it going. Doug king who unfortunately is not here but he rescued the x prize many times. So there were all of these people who managed to keep this dream alive long enough to make it happen. It was a grueling odyssey and they were unrelenting. And now we have these really skilled, talented teenagers who are just going to say a few words. We have eric finman here and jessica and justin. Eric, justin and jessica. They will say a couple of words here. Kind of as this next generation as next generation of innovators and dreamers and forward thinkers. Eric, you want to say a couple words . Thank you. Like peter read, an amazing book, the advice in the book inspired us because we have had bert rattan on the team. Were doing this as teenagers, High School Team in northern idaho. That is like all the odds against you. [laughter]. Were launching a satellite that is the, time capsule, modern day 20th century golden capsule, a on the voyager mission. Were launching it on 40th anniversary on the voyager mission. Updated time capsule. Were so fortunate to have bert and julian and amazing people help us out and give us advice. It is absolutely amazing. Jeff has something to say too. So it only takes. It takes one person, one book, one opportunity to ignite passion for space that students may not know that they have that they have. A year ago if you told me i would be launching a satellite i would have is laughed for you. That opened up my eyes on opportunities i have, and i could send somebody to mars or be the person sent to mars if i wanted to. As finance lead for project da vinci it is my honor to be here with people like julian and peter and mentors like bert. Were building a satellite for all. That means everybody can use it. We want to bring the passion for space back to the nation. So, thank you for writing your book. It was an inspiration i think for everybody who is our age or older or anybody who has ever heard of the x prize or the spaceshipone. Thank you. [applause] that is so wonderful to see the next generation inspired. Want to recognize one individual before we start our panel discussion. I want to recognize a gentleman, his name is Arthur Davenport and he was the designer, he is a guest, he was designer of the backpacks for apollo 11 and mr. Davenport is right back here. [applause] so maybe we can all get some stories from him later on. But i would imagine those are amazing tales. So i think next were going to have alan boyle up and were going to have a great panel discussion. And i think peter has to leave a little bit early but well try and also get your questions in. So it is just a great honor to be here. Thank you. [applause] thank you, julian and thanks to the museum. Im not going to take much time. Im the aerospace and science editor for geek wire, a local test site. My name is alan boyle. I had the privilege of meeting peter back in 1998 when he was trying to raise all that money and came to cover the x prize ever since then. And the x Prize Program has been continuing even after the 10 million ansari x prize was awarded. So peter is the founder and executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation and has many, many programs devoted to promoting technological innovation in the works and so looked up xprize. Org for more details on that. I want to refresh your memory about our other panelist Julian Guthrie you know by now. Eric lindbergh, adventter you are, artist, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, on board of trustees for the X Prize Foundation and helped out the x prize immensely while they were trying to put all this together for the ansari x prize. Dave moore was paul allens project manager for the spaceshipone project. One other thing i warranted to do, to catch you uptodate. Spaceshipone was followed by spaceship ii. Developed by virgin galactic, backed by british billionaire Richard Branson. They had a fatal accident couple years ago. They recovered from the accident. They have second spaceship ii they have begun to test flight. Blue origin, jeff bezos venture, launch ad reusable rocket for fifth time, amazing, amazing feat. That was couple weeks ago. We have some people from blue origin here. And another Company Called orbit tall atk Just Launched be commercial cargo ship to the International Space station couple of hours ago and it could be argued that none of this might have happened if it werent for the spark that was lit by Peter Diamandis, and other people what he called the commercial spaceflight revolution. Since peters time is limited i will ask him to share one of your favorite stories. I have a couple of questions i wanted to ask you. Then i know you have to get going pretty soon. Did you say 100 of my favorite stories . [laughter]. Honestly not really possible to choose one story and, from my standpoint i would love to get into the q a. Im not sure how late i apologize my team had us starting at 5 30, not 6 30. I have two hours but im on a flight at 8 15. God oh mighty. Given doug is not here let me embarass him appropriately. So you can all give him hell next time shows up. So doug king, when i met him was, had just finished the Challenger Center and he just accepted a job at st. Louis science museum. I had him i used to hold a salon in my home in my living room every month where i would bring together amazing people in the space business. We talk about what is. I came up with the idea of the x prize because i was absolutely sure incentivizing 10 Million Dollar challenge would work. I would sure i would launch in l. A. Or florida or same way lindbergh got his money. Doug is over for the salon and were talking and he goes, you know, you should go to st. Louis again. I go, st. Louis . Yeah, this whole legacy. So he convinced me to come there. And we actual got . Got this going very much thanks to him. The long story how this prize got funded, and julian who has done an amazing book, so proud of the work that you have done. Eric was on my board at the time. We could, when i announced this prize under the arch in st. Louis for 10 million i was absolutely postively sure it would be easily fundable. Who would not want to pay 10 million after someone pulled off the flight. It was nobrainer. I pitched billionaire, ceo, youre crazy, it cant be done, someone will die, no, no, no. And we ended up actually, as julian tells in the book, funding this thing through a holeinone insurance policy. And the holeinone insurance policy was this crazy idea that you pay a, at that time was a 3 million premium in order to get the money, to get someone to bet against you. We paid 3 million if someone won 10 million end of 2004, the Insurance Company would pay the money. If no one won, they keep our 3 million bucks and competition was over. The problem was, even after we negotiated this prize, this thing for 3 million, we didnt have 3 million. There would be 50,000dollar fridays i will negotiate with them. I will pay you 50,000 a month for a year, give me enough time to raise the rest of the money. And so we would have these 50,000, the first 50,000 payment i made myself. That is maximum i could possibly afford. The next one, i went, in fact eric and i have a lot of our Board Members at the xprize are people who reached into the pocket and paid that 50,000 friday. One period were short a chunk of change and i go to doug and it is like, doug, this thing is over unless you get the museum to pitch in, like a quarter of a Million Dollars. So we have the chairman of museum of flight here. I want you imagine doug coming in you have to say yes, you have to say yes. And he did. He got the st. Louis Science Center pitch in one of the final major payments before we had the ansari family. For that reason you see on the side of the spaceship along with mars and 7 up and ansari family, the st. Louis Science Center as one of the benefactors. He saved my smooch a multitude of times so. With that, maybe, yeah, great. [applause] that will do. That will do. Sure, why doesnt we have a couple of questions . I had one that ive got to ask is, it has been 12 years since the spaceshipone flights and we were talking about tourists would go into space an commercial spaceliners and did you think it would be 12 years and we would still be waiting . Oh god, if you give me 100 to one odds i would never bet on 12 years. Here is the fact. We live on a planet where a gravity of 9. 82 meters per second squared that is just, just low enough to get off of the planet. Its hard. The laws of physics make it hard. The rocket equation make it extraordinarily difficult. The beautiful thing i know without any question in my heart and my soul this next decade is the decade for the kids or those young in heart here. Youre alive during a time that, whatever we become as humans a thousand years from now, it is this next decade, the next 20 years well look back at as this is the moment in time when we moved off the planet irreversibly. It is right here. Right now. We have incredible people like your very own jeff bezos and eel lon musk and paul allen and Richard Branson and larry page. Multitude of different people i have in the audience. Where is chris . Let me just recognize, i serve as the cofounder, executive chairman of planetary resources. Chris who landed three missions on martian surface. [applause] is now ceo and im so proud of having him as ceo of planetary resources, again another seattle company. Amazing time to be alive, right . The code is being cracked right now and there is enough capital, risktaking capital, right . Were not going to replicate what happened in the 1960s, where it was u. S. Soviet race. Assassination of kennedy. Apollo program was extraordinary moment in the time taken out of the future put into the past but we do have i believe the impetus, the drive, the need to open up space and its going to happen now because the risktakers, the mind set, these exponential technologies, exponentially reducing cost of reaching space to the point where we are, as a species reaching escape velocity. So questions from the floor anyone . No questions at all . Just a second. We have a microphone coming to you. Running at you at light speed. Thank you, sir, can you repeat the question . The. So you mentioned tyranny of the rocket. I was curious how much we can scale horizontal takeoff to lift heavier and heavier vehicleses . It is really fun to do basics physics experiment and the physics experiment is the following. One of my Companies Space adventure was predecessor to planetary resources of the weve flown eight people to the space station private alley on the capitalist russian soyuz vehicle to put a little plug in there. Because the shuttle, they wouldnt allow that. That is different story and different conversation. It is 100 million, 120 million for a spaceflight on soyuz. Divided by three, that is roughly 40 million a seat. If you think about what percentage after soyuz cost is is the fuel. Anybody know the answer . Less than 1 is the fuel, right . It is labor, the labor, the labor. If you make a vehicle reusable, all you do fuel and go, theoretically you could drop the cost down by 100 fold. Now do the following experiment. For teachers in the audience go and do this with your students tomorrow. If you wanted to put, what is your name . Thomas. Put thomas into space, round up the number say you weigh 50 kilograms. 50kilogram spacesuit or 100, spacesuit 100 kilograms good enough . So 200 kilograms into space. Mass times gravity, times height to get you up to 200 kilometers altitude. If i want to circularize you to orbital velocity, 25 kilometers per second, onehalf mb squared. You count potential energy and Kinetic Energy to get the spacesuit in orbit, buy that off the grid, 7 cents kilowatthour. Got you to space in over an hour, cost of you and your spacesuit going to orbit is about 100 bucks. So we have a lot of price performance, 40 million, down to 400,000, down it 100 bucks. A lot of progress to be made in space. But what we need is an economic engine to get us into space. That is where the Companies Like planetary resources everything that has ever driven humans to explore looking for resources. You land to explore into, enter jeff bezos moving industries in space or elon going into mars. A exciting time. A lot of progress to be made. While you guys are working out math, are there other questions . Here is one over here. This one is for peter. Peter you have done some things in space from said, planetary research, spacex, xprize and which one is most challenging and what unifies all of those . Oh, god, what ahn nice them, a eightyearold kid desperately to go into space as julian telephones beautifully in story and meet astronaut tells me numbers. Chance of being accepted as astronaut is one in a thousand. Oh, my god, i can work hard. Even if you get accepted your chance of flying is only 50 , half the astronauts in the corp have never flown. Theyre called penguins because they have wings but dont fly. If you fly, right erica, my flight once or twice. No, i want to fly every weekend. [laughter]. So, everything has been trying to not get myself into space but create an economic engine that wants to drive us into space more and more and more because that will be a risingside. Reduced cost and increased drive. So those are unifying, the realization it is all about people. It is all about people. The right people and the right technology can track capital. Called venture capital. Right amount of people and right amount of capital you can build technology. It is called r d. About people with moon shot mind set. Not afraid to take a risk and do whatever it takes. I have two fiveyearold kids, what i want to teach them is passion, my passion for space is what drove me through everything i have i have ever done at light. Passion that wakes you up in the morning, read amazing books, curiosity and grit. If you read the book, i think most impactful thing, if i lad one superpower, it is not giving up, not giving up. It is refusing to give up. Anyone else . What was hardest . Oh god, no question the hardest was raising the 10 million. Eric was there and you thought that was going to be the easiest. I thought it would be easy. We raised from st. Louis half a Million Dollars in capital, 25,000 at a time. Called it the new spirit of st. Louis. Your granddad raised 25,000 in total from the spirit of st. Louis organization, right . He named his airplane after the group that funded him. I raised half a million. It was starting to slow down, the rate at which were raising money. So we made a calculated bet we would spend all the money to announce this thing. We had two Board Members resign on the spot because they thought it was crazy idea and not the right thing to do. It was sort of burning the ships. Once we announced it but had no choice other than to raise money. I was so, so absolutely broken away how riskaverse people had become. Honestly, really, no . You have got so much money it. What are you going to do with all those billions . Really . And it was so challenging. So, peter, what did you say, you came and asked me for money. So i have to bring dave moore into this. So dave, honestly the most illogical person in the world to raise money from was paul allen. Getting to paul allen was very difficult and i emailed paul. Put calls into paul. I was relentless. And i got pitched to dave moore. So dave is representing all of pauls invests in space interests and im, im like, i finally got my meeting with dave. Dave, was oh, my god, i got a meeting with dave moore, it is like this big deal. I remember to this day. I come in and with videos and power points and brochures and it is a pretty good pitch. Is that the way you saw it, dave . Actually it was a great pitch. A great pitch. I was thinking this guy might actually raise the money because at the time i was already talking to burt about setting up the project. We were going after the prize before it was funded. So i was taking a risk to actually fund this ring, to actually build spaceshipone because i knew peter didnt have the money. Here he is trying to get the money from me. I cant tell him. He is looking at me straight in the face hmmm, that is very interesting. Yes, i will take it under advisement. I will talk to paul about it. All this time burt is pitching dave and paul on putting up what was ultimately 26 million bucks. By the way when burt came to you to fund the spaceshipone project, how much money did he want up front . So actually there were two stages. When he first came to us he only wanted 8 million. Theyre all optimists, right . He was going to build by the way jeff johnson is here. Jeff was my main manager helped me on the project. And burt was going to build a spacecraft only flew just the pilot. He was going to hang it underneath pretty tee just. The proteus is smaller graft. Looks like that. White knight one. Proteus was predecessor to white knight. Angel communications. Lets not go there. Lets not go there. It is in the book. Read the book. Read the book. So burt was pitching that. At one point paul goes, lets go for the xprize. I dont want to do proof of concept thing. Lets actually go for it. Burt came with the model 316 which is spaceshipone. How much did he want at that point . At that point 19 million. 19 million. How much money did you finally end up spending . 28. 6. There you go. Theyre all optimists. You got five minutes. Honestly, between, between the documentaries and donation of spaceshipone to air and space museum and licensing i think paul made money on whole thing. We made money. What about virgin, we made a lot of money. Virgin licenses the technology. We actually ended up developing two patents. Basically the license, patents and all our prototype material and so, with the donation of the spacecraft and winning xprize and license fees from. I had riched Richard Branson making it virgin xprize. Virgin mobile. Which killed me. He is the best person. Paul allen has ear of Richard Branson. After telling me no, all of a sudden, i see Richard Branson the morning of the first xprize flight. If you look at the vehicle, i had been trying to get the guys to put xprize logo on back on my sponsors because that is where cameras were pointing. On morning the vehicle rolls out with virgin on that. I cant even say what im saying because kids in the audience here. He had up front money. I got the check the day of the flight. Rolling out Virgin Atlantic airplane for the cameras. Im like, this is like, this is like gangster pr. Im thrilled richard back as billion dollars to commercialize it afraid it would end up in museum. Spaceshipone and spirit of st. Louis in the center of the smithsonian. That commitment which turned into industry which was the goal. Some random guy here wants to ask a question. Planetary resources. I want to build upon julians comment earlier about inspiration and finding inspiration in books. I met you when i was 19 and i think what youve conveyed to me i would like you to convey to the audience is attitude about taking action. And could you comment on when is the right time and when are the right circumstances to make choices to do things and what conditions you should wait for . Yeah. So the question is when is now the right time to take action . And one of the, years ago i started cataloging these things ive called peters laws. A friend of mine had on his wall, murphys law if anything can go wrong it will. I wrote on my whiteboard, if anything can go wrong, to hell with murphy. If anything goes wrong fix it, to hell with murphy. That was the first one. The ratio of something to nothing is infiniti. So just doing something, taking a step, action every day. So for anybody here who is a wouldbe entrepreneur, who has a dream you have not told anybody, your ability to take action on it immediately and that action can be reading an amazing book that will inspire you. Fining a cofounder to go do it with. Go and raise first dollar. When you take the first action, it commits you. One of the most important things you can do which was scary for me early on, tell everybody what your dream is. The more people you tell about it where is alex in the room . Alex, where are you in the room . There you are. Alex is ceo of a company. What is your Company Called . Ability app. So i introduced him to jeff here. So he would not have met jeff if he hadnt tell me about it. Tell everybody about your dream, about your action. Dont ever be embarrassed that is the worst thing. The difference between something to nothing is infinite, the difference between, for me, the xprize, the only reason it didnt fail because i didnt give up, right . Some people said dont do it, give up. I had amazing team of partners, greg, bob weiss, eric murphy, eric lindbergh, so many people, we supported each other and we did not give up. Did you have a question . No, sorry. Tell me a little bit about what your dream is since peter im trying to develop an app that will help people with disabilities navigate public spaces and find,afe Reliable Services and employment. God bless you. Thank you. [applause] there is a person who would like to ask a question right over there . A little bit orlandoer than our last questioner. Just a little. Usually when you go through entrepeneurship environment you end up finding that you make a lot of mistakes, and mistakes are the places where you actually learn something worthwhile but those tend to get hidden in the history. It looked like it just worked. Yeah. Im sure that wasnt the case. What was memorable sort of disasters you had aside from financing . I mean, i like to joke that the xprize was an overnight success after 11 years of hard work. And i mean there were so, so many and the book talks about that. I think, you know, we were out of money so many times, on fumes. One of the great story, one of the great heroic moves, i met eric, one of the things i did right early on, and by the way to say something. The xprize was not first thing i did. For any entrepreneurs in audience or any kid in the audience, it was 12th thing first. I started a steds chapter. Jeff bezos was president of his chapter. Chris was president of mine. I was president of his. It is a great experience. We should have a lot of seds chapters. That led to International Space foundation and International Space university. Alumni of isu here and led to on and on and on. You build one, you do that. Watch you support taking next risk and support taking next risk. And one of the things that i learned was, having the right people around you made all of the difference in the world, and, i was in 2000, no, 1995 i snuck into the air and space museum for the lindbergh black tie gala. Didnt have invitation. Snuck in, because i wanted to meet the lindbergh family. And the lipped Lindbergh Foundation had annual he is arent. I met rev lindbergh. One thing you never do, i met primary person. She was ceo and president of the Lindbergh Foundation at the time. I said i really want to get the lindbergh family involved in crazy idea called the xprize. She said, well, you need to meet eric lindbergh. He is a pilot. He will get this. I met eric very soon thereafter. Eric will tell that story and arc of that story to fast forward six years later, seven years later, when were out of money on the, which anniversary, 75th, 75th anniversary where eric does something daring and recreates his grandfathers flight as single pilot, singleengine aircraft and raises a Million Dollars to keep the xprize going. So this is a, an effort that died a thousand deaths along the way but it was perseverance and amazing people who would not give up. Eric, i would love to hear your side of the story, eric. You were dealing with some personal challenges at that same time. So i got to think you this guy peter must be one of the craziest people alive to come up with this hair brained idea. You were purely environmentalist. What are we spending money on space for. Yeah, clearly peter is crazy. [laughter] there is just no question. I was living in a yert on bainbridge, sort of off the grid. I had grown up in this ethos of trying to balance advances in technology with preservation of the environment. My grandparents really spent latter half of their lives working to try to save our quality of life for i for me and our generation so we would know that quality of life that he had. And, when peter and byron lick lick let me get a couple names. Byron lick 10 berg, flown two shuttle missions. He is one of the first people i called. Byron was really Founding Member about xprize as well, as, our friend miss bevi. Collette bevis. A number of people, i get a lot of credit in the book you but there were dozens of people extraordinarily central to this. These guys were interesting and byron was a twotime astronaut, and i just got from him at that dinner at a grill in kirkland that i, im not a space geek. Im kind of an aviation geek but i wanted to see our planet from space. And what would that do to our ability to keep this spaceship, the only really sustainable spaceship we have, you know. It has plants and animals and all the people that we love, how to keep that sustainable until we get, maybe space could teach us that, how to not screw up our own nest as humans. Thats where i came from and, this was cool it was a little bit over the edge, you know. I thought, huh, i will check it out further and further and the more you get involved the more you get infected, not just by this idea of going into space and maybe experiencing weightlessness, for me i was disabled. I had rheumatoid arthritis, from state champion gymnast to walking with a cane when i met you guys. I was walking with a cane bearly. I thought i want to go to space to experience weightlessness because my personal situation. But, what kind of evolved through that, was this team of people and working with the museum of flight and ralph and spirit of seattle and here, raising money, ah, peter. [applause] im so sorry. You go girl. We know you got somewhere to be. [applause] he burns hot. Now just us. He burns hot. Now we can talk about him, the real story. Wait a minute. He is not out of the building. Just that infectious, entrepreneurial, startup mentality of well, that didnt work. Oh, well try it this way. Or well go talk to this person twice. Or well go, see, we went to see orvill who had a Meatpacking Company in st. Louis and he gave us 25,000 bucks. Unbelievable. It was amazing to be a part of a small team of people that got spaceshipone hanging in the air and space museum next to my grandfathers plane and that, that overnight success of 10 years, that, was incredibly difficult but had that kind of success, has given me, just given all of us, that juice that we need to keep trying, even after failure. To keep, okay, what am i going to do next . Because i know that i can change the world. And that was, it is really the most incredible gift i ever had in my life, to have it come when i was really at the bottom, disabled, didnt have a life, didnt have a computer at that time, that probably would have been a good thing. My physical life was over, but i was able to gain it back again and to gain that along with this arc of the spaceship was, you know, something, i dont know if i will get another chance but im going to keep trying. I know you have got some things going on, eric, but are you thinking that you would want to go into space . Is there something in that lindbergh genetics makes you feel like you would want to give that a try . I would love to go to space and see our planet. When you talk to jim lovell and gene cernan and those goes who have been out there, everything you know and love and depend upon to survive is down here. I want to experience that. But also, looking at spaceshipone in the air and space museum, i realized im not really a Rocket Scientist. Im an aviation geek. Therefore, what did i learn from this . How do we do that again . How do we do that for aviation, which is my chosen field. Ive been pointing at electric propulsion which represents clean and quiet. That is big frontier for nasa. Its a hard problem like spaceflight. Energy dense i of batteries way too heavy. More weight you get up in the air more power to keep it aloft, more weight you need to carry, its a negative feedback loop. It is important, we need clean and quiet flight and exciting flight that gets the next generation going. If we dont, someone else will be sitting in the left seat, the pilot seat driving that industry. So,. Weve got to do it. Were at the exponential curve, the knee of the curve now where were starting to see tremendous amount of electric development. And batteries are slowly coming along, so we start to see it. Taking a lot longer than i hoped when i started 10 years ago. Julian, i want to hear a little more how you got involved in this because this is such a big story, and, do you, what were you doing when the flights occurred . How did you get into this project . What were you thinking . I was thinking that you were about eight years old. No. So i was a reporter at the San Francisco chronicle for 20 years and i met beat Peter Diamandis two years ago. That was it. I was doing an a1 profile on him. I said how did the whole xprize thing begin . I knew it only in the most superficial details or most superficial kind of glance and more he told me bit, the more intrigued i was. I didnt know the connection to the lindberghs. I didnt know the incentive i hadnt really looked at the incentive prize model. I certainly didnt know how many times people had told him no. I hadnt known much about burt rutan who is great, larger than life, you can not make this sort of character up which is why i like nonfiction. And then the test pilots, and erics story, paul allen and dave moores story, trying to bring structure to Scaled Composites in a very different ecosystems. I go about stories because of the characters and the drama and where they begin and where they end and, what are their dreams. What are the obstacles they face. And what do they do to make those dreams a reality and how does it affect us. I seem to like the underdog stories. This was certainly david versus goliath struggle. I really became more and more captivated by the characters. The more i knew about them. Then to think, that you know, history was made and inspired an industry, that is really at its most promising state today, as you know. Any other questions right now . Just a second. Here. What is your forecasting hat on, im really sorry peter cant participate, could each of you just we heard it was 30 million a person. And we heard peter say it was 100 of energy. Oh, what the cost of going to space would be. What is the cost going to be in 10 years . So, dave, youre the number cruncher. Lets let him tackle this. Is it on . I am actually putting a lot of faith in virgin getting spaceshiptwo together. Unfortunate they had serious accident on halloween, first prototype, inflight problem that crashed and killed one of the pilots. But they have the second example built at this point. It is being built by the Spaceship Company run by a good friend of ours, doug shane. There are a lot of good engineers down there. I really think they will get that thing together. I think were a year or two, simple flights available for 250,000. 10 years from now, i dont know. I met elon musk number of times. He has amazing team. He is amazing individual. He has amazing commitment to getting people on mars. If anyone can do it, he can. He is our iron man of our generation. 10 years from now there is a lot of possibilities really affordable for a lot of folks. Yeah, i think the figure that we used to talk about, that was the most meaningful to me, all forms of transportation are expensive in the beginning. Trains, automobiles, theyre prohibitivelily expensive. Once you start to achieve those economies of scale, the cost comes down. So, im not up for 250 grand for a flight. Bring it down to 50 grand, 25 grand . Id go, maybe twice. That may be possible 10 years from now. That is what i was thinking. It would have to get down to 25. Down to 25. I think it is our price goal, three years from now 250. 10 years from now 50. Maybe 15 years from now, 25. Achievable goals with the progress that has been made so far. Shawn . Dave, this question is for you. You were, ive listened to about half the book, i think you worked in early days for microsoft alongside bill gates, is that correct . I actually started in microsoft in 1981. I was employee 108. There were 60 people in the company. I was hire 108 in 1981. Bill gates was my boss for four years. Those are kind of early days of i. T. Industry here in seattle. You had front row seat to the birth of commercial space industry. How would you compare, i read some challenges and Program Manager, difference between software and aerospace . There are a lot of similarities. I was hired at microsoft. I worked at boeing. They brought me in as someone with Product Development and experience and support at a big scale. So they were, and actually was hired to originally work on multiplan, microsofts first spreadsheet product. I was charged to bring a lot of, just sort of i guess, grownup control and monitoring and guidance to that whole project. And, jeff johnson here was actually my primary Program Manager on station one project, you have to have sort of a role of sort of good cop, bad cop. I did a lot of negotiations on the contracts. I sent jeff down to find out what the dirt was. What was really going on in the project on a daily basis. And there was a sort of a seminal moment, it was december 2002, burts team was active for about a year, every time we saw the schedules. Here is what were going to do, well do by particular date and check on date. They were telling us now we have slipped another week or a month or two months. So every time we would see a new schedule, basically had slid month for month. So we had to go down and talk about basic Program Management. How do you get stuff done. Even in an environment where you are inventing new things. Early days of microsoft we were inventing a lot of new things but there are basic ways that you can look at technology, basic steps you can apply. Basic Program Management tasks. Basic ways you work with the team. A lot is about working with the team. How you interact with engooers and people have to do work so youre communicating with them. One of the fundamental things i learned early on at microsoft that jeff and i had to teach the folks at scale, you dont go and tell them youre going to reach this milestone and reach these objectives on this date. You go work with them. Were working as team. Were trying to reach this goal. This is what were trying to do. Tell me what time you need. Tell me systems you need. Work together to put together the plan. At one point, jeff and i were describing this dude burt rutan and i would tell them, no, burt, you have to go out and ask them when they can get it done because when they, when they actually work with you to come up with the schedule, and you have the basic agreement particular time. They made the commitment. They are now actually respecting you for asking their opinion on when they actually can get the work done. They have made that solid commitment to the reach the date. When you encounter the first time you can visibly see how stressed out the engineers were when we talk to them. Whats the date . Look at me like 12 weeks . Hes a studley guy, 25. You probably cibecue but great engineer and bert told them the only date do understand this 12 weeks from now, or whatever it was. Then undercover we would go and say like okay, byrd is not here anymore, i dont care what and you tell me but you cannot slide it as you give an update every week or two i have to tell public the noblest. If its like to give we will have a little come to jesus which is bad because the money might not be a anymore. Ill give a couple weeks, work out the real number and then you were on the hook, do you understand . Okay. We would go do that. It took a few weeks. Burt really was uncomfortable with that. The engineers will tell you for ever they want to be slackers. Ill be looking at the same time lex thats how it went down. We did take a few weeks for them, months for them to understand even then you have to kind of learn your way around the organization because youre always going to get one kind of story from a guy whos really far up in charge and may not have to do the sewing our way to produce that has to be done to make the project work. If have more boots on the ground you can kind of like that guy hasnt slept in like three days, i dont think youre making the date. That kind of feedback was really good. We would do her own internal external schedule. We would say berthold is one number, i would say this is his number. This is my number, i think we should go for that one. Actually theres a lot of techniques, i wont go into details but Program Management, a lot of things you can do to circuit the actual production. We had to train that to the scale folks. I was just going to say when i was looking back at the stories that he wrote in 1998, peter was saying this xprize will be won in 2001, three years and a we will have it one. Was 2004 which is really not bad when youre talking about Rocket Science but it seems like there is a trend that holds aches longer than people think its going to take and people say going to take. Does that does come with the territory with any project . Aviation has history of this. The way this project started off for me is paul sent me an email that said we need to do something with burt. Thats a la senate. I had to figure it out from there. When burt actually proposed the project to me, i describe of the project was, heres what burt thinks it is. Whatever he tells us in the and its going to cost more, its going to take longer and the craft will be too heavy. All those things came true. Any other questions . Its true. Its true in aviation. Its true in space. It always takes longer. Although blue origin and spacex are kind of changing that curve. Maybe urgent collective also although its taking them time. It always takes longer. Is there anyone from blue origin whom i want to say a word . Now, okay . [laughter] when i was working on a spaceship putting the proposal together i did a full survey of every company i could find that was doing things they saluted. I wasnt necessary going to tell paul or recommend to pull that we find burt. I wanted to see all the competitors. I knew about blue origin at the time. This is like in 2000 i found a whether address was, when the company was and he reached out to jeff to find out what was going on. We would throw our hat in with him after going down the path. I go down to the office down, someplace and the whistle side out of the blue origin i knocked on the door and no one answered the door. To this date ive ever talked to anyone at blue origin even though i reached out. And you said there was lou paper in the window. Blue paper in the windows. But i talked to 22 of the companies in my Due Diligence before we signed the paperwork to be spaceship one. But this was experiment a and was taking longer because they had simply never done this before. It had never been done. Into been done by the world, three largest governments, by the u. S. , china come in the soviet union. Youve got a small team of 2030 engineers working in the Mojave Desert and theres a great story in a book about the thermal Protection System. Its just a classic. Epitomizes the scrapping this of this group of people. They are ready to go with the supersonic flight and they need to get the thermal protection figured out, and they have been fretting over this and none of it had been working and they been coming back from flights. The paint was chipping off and it was like the desert of mojave. The nose of spaceship one and this young engineer, hes like burt, this isnt going to work. What are we going to do . We have the supersonic flight coming up. Says body putty. Scrape some of this off, put some body putty on. Dry like hard candy. Body putty . Is like automotive putty. Bono, yes, thank you. That is like what . Is looking at burt and burt walks away and hes like okay, body putty. He tries it out, tested at different temperatures and it works. He goes back to burt and says it works, it works. Hurts us what works . The body putty. Great. But this is proprietary so you cant just call a body putty. You need to go to the store. You need to get some different ingredients, speaking of the recipe. You need is something to make it proprietary. You need to get some oregano last night this is a true story. [laughter] you cannot make these things up. You need to get some cinnamon because you add a little cinnamon to the body putty and suddenly you have this beautiful pinkish she which will do with the american patriotic thing. And so thats what the proprietary thermal Protection System was. And it worked for spaceship one. If you look real closely may be in the smithsonian you will see little flecks of oregano in the paint. Dont forget the oregano. Yes, this gentleman had a question. In both the past and the future what do you think is more important, innovation of existing technologies, invention of new, or just more capital to help create a larger economy of scale for it, for Space Development . That i mention im not a Rocket Scientist . I think in most technological development, its a stepbystep iteration. Its people putting together off the shelf stuff in any way. Using new Technology Like computer code to make it actually work at the right timing and so forth. Like my grandfathers flight across the atlantic was all off the shelf parts. He just did it in a little bit different way. Burt kind of come his stuff is little more crazy come a little more out there, although more experimental. It really isnt. Honest to god, the big story that burt told dave and i is that is innovation, first, ill ask a question to the audience to how much of the earths air is under 60,000 feet . What percentage of the atmosphere of earth is a 60,000 feet or lower . A guest in the back. What do you have . Right, 9395 of the air is below 60,000 the. Above 60,000 feet your body temperature is high enough to boil the water in your body at the air pressure that exists at 60,000 feet. You are lethal about 60,000 feet if you dont have the space see. Pcs eye of the wind was, its a pressurized home built aircraft. Is like rationalized . Whats the servicing of the . 32. Really . Thats almost a spaceship. Right . Thats over half. You were like dude, they are not even that good at it. I could do better than that. That was his first step. Like if we built a sealed vessel, its just an egg. Like theres a co2 scrubber. A little tank, a scuba tank of air to add extra air in that. Thats it. Its no special freaky miniaturized spaces briefing like the. We get a scuba tank, and if the pressure looks low, you should open the file, right . [laughter] and literally thats how it works. The flight controls are the same as a cessna. At the push with electronic dream. I dont know if there any flyby little airplanes but they are way more complicated than a spaceship one. Spaceship one was just like an old system. You only intimate when you have to. Thats the trick to doing it on time and cheaply. The rocket motor, okay, that was a little tricky. That took all the innovation. The rest of it is pretty straightforward. And reentry. The stable reentry was pitch independencindependent so thatg thing you talked about most other airplanes have to reenter at a very controlled pitch. If yo youre too high you bounce often end up in the ocean. If youre too low you go too fast and burt a. Of those are bad. [laughter] you want to create a way that no matter what the attitude is of the airplane on reentry into stable and then you fly homeland. Thats exactly what spaceship one does. To areas of innovation, thats it. We only had to pass on that and one is for the the others for the rocket mounting. Keep the innovation as small as possible and still achieve the technical gold youre looking for. If you know what the leading edge of technology is with time and think and put together towards a novel purpose, thats where most of these inventions come from. Staying abreast of where the latest updates and said i can use it for that, i can use it for that. Thats what you want to pay attention. And bono is much more useful than they thought spent the other breakthrough, all his crazy, beautiful designs. Those are not standard. Who came up with that . The art is damn. What is a dance lasting . And craig is a guide to the stars and stripes. Kind famous for making these model airplanes. He worked to scale, the artist of scale. This is really cool. He designed the beautiful white knight scheme and the stars and stripes. And then the logos of course like virgin will send you the artwork and to bring it up. They are just a vinyl. On the real plane they are stick on you do a car. But who else makes designs like that . Exactly. When you hold it up and look at it, its an alien head. Who does that . Only burts been burt lives in a pyramid. What else do you need to know . Two guys flying boomerang, one of his other crazy designs, and its two aliens. You know the oval shaped head and it said, one guy is tearing his mask off and hes like, these masks are really uncomfortable. Hes an alien underneath. [laughter] that tells you a Little Something about his creativity. I think with time for one more question. Lets make it a good one. No pressure. Be this young gentleman right in front. Wait a second and we will have the mic. So with this plane, so if, on the side a kind of looks like planes. My question is why did they make it look like planes on each side . Did they want to like cut off at the end of the other side, which is attached to the main body to make three points total . It does look kind of weird. It is weird. Is what eric is talking about. Ill get up and show you what happened here. So i think what you are talking about, these are not connected. These look like to playing sidebyside. Remember jet exhaust into the tale would be bad because its hot. You didnt want of Something Back there. Of the weird connection is unique have enough room down there to carry spaceship one holy underneath it. If we wanted to, the wait was designed to be safe is if they get to stage the altitude design so flies up like an airplane. If something goes wrong, cant let go today. Ninjas land. Totally safe. Everybody gets out. I that were going to space today. Not today. You were defined. You, you have enough room underneath to land. Then when you drop this thing or light it on fire theres a big plume of rocket exhaust the comes out the back. Also very hot. You dont want to take anything of the carrier plan. In order to get it to all fit together to build the two tailpiece is simply. At the time the was a lot of discussion. I think it mightve been one of the first airplanes ever not have a connected horizontal stabilizer across the back. May be the first one although white knight to mac also has this configuration also the shuttle launcher which is another burt design. It turns out they work really well. A lot of the aviation guys like im not sure its going to work. Burke is like a british a good work. Im the guy in charge so we are going to try it. It did work. It worked really well. But all this airplanes show does like kind of fantastic ethos where they look really beautiful because the all their designed to do is one specific purpose. Burt has in mind, with like no a mosh to the old way of doing it. Its all anyway the comes out averts it. Know that these two are the same. Its because the use of the making of this to prototype the making of that to save time and effort. And one neat thing, so ill bug you . Im 10 years old. You are 10 years old. So when burt was growing up, he loved aviation. He loved planes. And so does the brother who wet on to become a test pilot. But burt was this guy from the very beginning who, they wouldnt get a model airplane kit and build it from that cant following someone elses instructions. He would watch his brother build the plane. His brother would fly the plane. His brother would crash the plane and he would pick up the pieces and he would make a plan of his own design. It started when he was your age, and he loved designing planes but he always loved designing planes of his own imagination. Thats what he kept doing for all of his life. So he was drawn to it than any wanted to make things of his own design, which is a really powerful, amazing message. Julian, this is your party. I would love you if you have any closing words. I think thats a great message, when you find your passion or think about what it is and listen to your instincts and take in all of the knowledge that you can but ultimately follow your instincts and try to do really, really extraordinaire thanks. But its one step at a time that it was one step at a time for burt rutan. As one step at a time for peter. Is one step at a time for erik lindbergh, for everybody whos involved in this where it was just a matter of again going back to the word first appearance and innovating perseverance your incoming back to time and again and having this singular dream that you have to see realized. So thats one of the things that i most love about this story. Are we done done or can i add something . Added. Okay. I just want to say that there is so much its not in this book that when you read it you go how could there be more . But this guy, this young guy named Mike Millville was too old to fly for the airline and he flew this rocketship into space. When he was a 63. And he actually fluid. So its not like the Space Shuttle computer flies up there, right, the pilot is that doing anything. Spaceship one, the pilot is holding the stick the whole time. Like you fly the plane to space. I guess my point is, we even if youre a young kid at 63 you can still go for it. I mean, the story continues. I so appreciate you writing it because it brought tears to my eyes just remember all the stuff that we went through. And thinking we were, peter and great and i have been struggling with this thing for years, and we decided our bucket list, we want to go get our ratings. We were out there, the three of us for a week of r r, getting our glider ratings and was the along easy fly in. And its Mike Millville. We go over, there were two operators and theyre doing glider training. Mike and pete diebold and brian and those guys were there in to get their commercial glider ratings because they were all kind of glider pilots already i think, most of them, but they were not commercial glider pilot. Indicating they because they were on the payroll and they were flying this thing back as a glider, so they had to get a glider rating. They had to go to drag search class. So the rocket lights off. You get all kinds of new things to think you dont think a. This is totally burt. Rocket lights off, flying, should be a lot of acceleration, did you do that. How . And brian is in the navy. We dont know anyone, Aircraft Carrier they will let us use of. Whats the second most acceleration you could have . A top fuel drag star. Isnt that a school in california that does yes, there is. All right, you guys all go down for the weekend they come back. Thats the launches hard. Its like 4. 5 gice. Thats how they practiced what the rocker would be like with learning to drive a dragster. That would be the equivalent of the pilot mode, sort of, of what it might be like to fly the initial boost phase when you drop at horizontal implement the quarter, we used to call it, to go vertical to go to space. Spin thats so awesome jeff. From the julian, writing this book, as come it kind of laid it all out in what we did which really was not on anybodys radar. We dated. It was kind of a big thing. We got on a lot of front pages at the times but its a busy world and now its set down so thats a legacy and thats incredibly powerful for people to learn about, how do persevere. And i just learned something new from jeff, so its like there is so much in, your story was disconnected from our story, was like trying to raise money, trying to get people behind us and efforts in seattle and in st. Louis, in new york and l. A. And that all sort of come coming together and even more so for me now, is a great gift. Thank you. [applause] thank you. I feel like we could be here all night, but this is great. I feel like weve been in on just around the virtual campfire and telling tales. Doesnt the museum to space camp . Lets go. [laughter] spin the museum does to space camp, as a matter of fact. Make sure to check into space came. I think we broke 2000 campus last year, but anyway, so this time i divide our panelists, if everyone could remain seated while our panelists make their way back to the book signing table and without conversation and additional book signing with them at that time. I would like to thank all of you for your time this evening. Our wonderful moderator, alan. [applause] that was great. Folks of books the want to be sight of who want to chat longer with our panelists they will be back over at the book signing table. Thank you for coming out this evening to the museum of flight. You are watching booktv on cspan few. Could look at whats on prime time tonight. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. His message conveyed to the tabloids boiled down to this. Get off my cloud, loser. Which is not of course how it works. The target having set himself up doesnt get a say over the incoming. Decides, trump had already, the Gold Standard for big hulking hubris and to do with him wouldve in common malpractice. In new york city he practically owned the 80s roc rocketing to the top as the big apples largest and most visible acyl. [laughter] knocking off big league rivals like ed koch, childrens novel and steve rebel. To those of us in the ridicule industry, the man spiked up the short fingered bulgarian was a gift beyond imagining. We made him a permanent part of our business plans. The earliest strips mocking trumps first president ial tribal and begin in the fall of 1987. People tell me i should be flattered, trump told newsweek, but as there was nothing remotely flattering about betrayal he soon became confused. Then irritated. All the time i strong him and would suggest i was unaware of how good looking he was. [laughter] by the end of the week it was game on. Trump had summon you to weigh in on and i had a new recurring reg character. When his reallife counterpart could be counted on to react in realtime. I was one lucky tar baby and remained so for years. Of course, i that point the company. Google trump entered we can you come across event of most great comedians. No matter how many wiseguys wanted a piece of them, it was always more than enough of the big fellow to go around. And embarrassment of always. After the first president ial head fake, that was the trump princess, luxury yacht whose owners fear of ocean travel that did more of these various failing casinos. Then came the Extramarital Affairs with real and imagined conducted under lights followed in rapid succession by the high profile bankruptcies, his attempt to tear down a Family Restaurant to build a parking lot for limos commissaries televised spectacles, the most with which featured him fiery celebrities who were already out of work last night is creepy sexual fantasies about his own daughter, the truth de baca is no product lines come on and on, like you wouldnt believe. But the best was yet to come. As he bore down on the seventh you need a new neighbor doing so after 30 years of lusting after certain tear down on 1600 pennsylvania avenue, he made good on his threat and actually ran for president. Tanned, rested and ready . Not so much. More like orange, hyper active and breathtakingly unprepared. [laughter] when his physician declared that trump would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, trump publicly thank his doctors fatherhood been dead since 2010. [laughter] you cant make this stuff up so why try . Some people feel that trump is beyond satire but we professionals know he is satire, pure and uncut, free for all to use and enjoy. For that we are not ungrateful. For our country though we can only weep. Speak you can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Are right. We will get started. Hello and welcome to robin hanson at the 18th annual fall for the book festival. We appreciate your attendance today. Our festival runs through september 30 so for the most uptodate information on the vessel including a calendar please visit also the. Org. Fall for the book touches on committees throughout the year two of the programming such as the rice and School Program come the new leaves writers conference and the alumni run feminist Literary Press gazing grain just to name a few