A Personal Report from Sheng

This is my story about my trip to Boston to present the results of the of the 50 Year visions for space exploration. I had an excellent time and meet many great people. I hope you enjoy reading the story

1. An Online Teamwork

Collecting & Processing Survey Results

Just 3 months before the conference being held in Boston University, I saw a notice in my school saying that 2 volunteer students were needed to help organizing a survey in China. Being interested in the subject of the survey and driven by my curiosity of how this survey would be carried out, I handed in my application and resume to WANG Ting (member of SGAC, also from BeiHang University) that evening. Actually about a dozen of other students had applied for this opportunity too. So, being coordinated by WANG Ting, we began to working on the survey, which was totally new to us.

Everything was going well at the beginning: preparing survey forms in Chinese, handing out and collecting the forms on the campus and nearby streets etc. But as the first round deadline coming closer, one of the main internet connections between China and other countries was cut off by an earthquake, which had made it rather difficult for us to collect the results from the web and communicate with Chris and other survey participants of SGAC. Facing this, some students chose to quit, while a classmate of mine, ZHANG Xiaotian and I decided to go on. After all, we could use satellite communication if needed, I thought. Finally, about 10 days after the first round deadline, the Chinese results were collected and sent to the SGAC website.

Once the first round results had been fully collected and entries sorted, we were able to get a draft picture of how young people think about “Future Key Events in Space”. Based on this picture, we then continued to work on the new round. While my participating in this part was affected by my limited English writing level and the unstable internet proxy, “Bee”, “QuantumP7” (Tiffany), “Another” and of course Chris had been leading the team online during this period. I must say thank you to them, it’s their huge work that enabled us getting the interesting and meaningful results from the second round survey.

Almost at the same time, the design of a brochure for the conference was started by Mark and Chris. “It’s the kind of work I like.” I thought to myself when reading Chris’s post about the brochure. So I made a simple concept design the next day, and many improved versions during the following weeks with the help of Mark and Chris. I enjoyed designing this brochure very much and was really happy seeing my design being accepted.

Visa Application: A Long Prelude

Everything we’ve done had been results of team working. Even my visa application was no exception.

Still being shocked by the news that I was selected as one of the delegates, I was shocked again when the visa officer of the US embassy told me that although I had prepared all the materials required, a visa check process was still needed because of my “special” background, and the check usually takes at least 4 weeks. Considering that the conference would be held in only 20 days, I kept trying to urge the check and inquiring the results during the following days, and asked Chris and Mark for help.

What Chris and Mark had done must be a complicated and long story. Anyway, due to their great efforts, my visa application was at last approved just 3 days before the latest possible flight. Phew…

2. In Boston

Preparing Presentation in Harvard

I like Boston very very much. The city's friendly people, convenient transportation, carefully made houses and transparent air just made me feeling comfortable.

But we were there for the conference, right? So in the very morning Chris, Tiffany and I met each other for the first time, we quickly began preparing for the conference presentation in Harvard (a beautiful place!) where Will kindly arranged an office room and a lunch for us, introduced us to an amazing person Jonathan and most importantly, gave many important suggestions to the presentation and follow-up works. During the break, we also paid a very short visit to an old observatory in Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Details of the trip could be found in Tiffany’s report

The Conference, Presentation and Yuri’s Night

The Conference started the next morning, and lasted for 3 days. Speeches were given one by one, and with the help of slide shows, I could understand almost half of the content, that’s much better than I thought. Some of the speeches were kind of boring to me, seemed to be repeating things. But anyway, I do feel that it’s been a great experience participating in it, meeting the speakers such as Roger Bonnet and Freeman Dyson, and learning how they developed their unique and foreseeing ideas.

After 3 days of preparing, our show time came in the first evening of the conference. We made the presentation as planned and Chris answered the questions perfectly. Our audiences were interested and impressed.

Surprisingly, I became rather calm when we were introduced by Mark, and then finished my part of the presentation more smoothly than I could expect. I would not have been able to complete this mission without the advices from Chris, Will and Mark and Tiffany’s help on the wording of my speech. And of course, I must thank Chris for kindly lending me his shirt and tie for the presentation.

When the presentation was done, the Yuri’s Night party began. Matthew, a nice guy I met during the conference, drove me to a club near MIT, and we celebrated the world space party with many interesting people there. Among them, there were planetary scientists, cosmology researchers and students who just love space. It's really wonderful just chatting (or shouting?) with them loudly with the house music being played in the crowded room. And more, I learned dancing and drank vodka for the first time in my life there!

The Workshop and the Indian Perspective

The participant workshop was the main event on the last day of the conference. Participants were divided into groups discussing key events of future space exploration on the workshop. It’s really an honor for me being invited to attend it.

Some perspectives of the workshop were really inspiring, and a lot of them seemed to be mainly based on or developed from the themes of our survey results, very interesting. However, few of them were concerned about the space governance issue. Which was kind of pity, I think.

Anyhow, the Indian perspective of “doing space exploration for the people” has been one of the most valuable things I’ve learnt from the conference. What would be the most powerful motivation for space exploring? Is it the support from people? Will scientific researches, political interests, space commercialization and colonization be all based on that?

I am now still thinking about these questions, since I believe that many other questions could be answered by answer them first.

Opportunity and Responsibility

It has been an unforgettable and invaluable experience doing the survey works online, not saying being finally invited to the conference and being part of this great event. I must say thank you to SGAC, the Secure World Foundation, the Planetary Society and the organizers of the conference for giving me such an opportunity.

Also I have special thanks to Chris, Mark, Will, Julia and of course you, Tiffany. You all are just such kind people who have made all of this a great experience to me.

And I must say thank you again to Chris and Tiffany, you’re the best boss and teammate I’ve met for a group work. I’ve learnt a lot from you, really.

Finally, I’d like share with everyone what an Ethiopian professor on the conference has said to me, that is, showing youth opinion on space to the public is not only an opportunity for us to help exploring space, but should be considered more as a responsibility that we should take. And I’m now calling it as “space opportunity and generation responsibility”.

Sheng (SHI Heng)