Huntsville Panel Talks Space Technology at SXSW

The Huntsville Madison County Chamber of Commerce recently took its Smart Place message to the South by Southwest (SXSW) technology, film, and music conference in Austin, Texas. 

This year’s event featured a Space Rush Summit as part of the Technology Track that focused on the future of space. The Chamber panel was selected as part of the Panel Picker program that allows the public to vote for panel proposals. 

The panel content was based on the Chamber’s ongoing efforts to create demand to land the Sierra Space Dream Chaser at Huntsville International Airport. Entitled “Microgravity: The Commercial Case for R and D,” the panel featured John Roth, Vice President of Business Development for Sierra Space; Olivia Holzhaus, founder and CEO of Rhodium Scientific; Mark Ciotola, CEO of Sustain Space; and Lucia Cape, the Chamber’s Senior Vice President of Economic Development, who moderated the panel. 

Around 50 people attended the session, with many more attending a coffee break and happy hour hosted by the panel members before and after the session. The team also attended a dinner the night before with other Technology Track speakers. 

Sierra Nevada Corporation, which developed the Dream Chaser, announced in 2021 that its space division would become Sierra Space, a subsidiary that would manage the Dream Chaser space plane and other space activities including Orbital Reef, the commercial station being developed in partnership with Blue Origin. 

The Dream Chaser is a multi-mission space utility vehicle designed to transport crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit (LEO) destinations such as the International Space Station. It was selected by NASA to provide cargo delivery, return, and disposal services for the ISS under the Commercial Resupply Service 2 (CRS-2) contract. 

Dream Chaser will provide a minimum of six cargo missions to and from the ISS, carrying critical supplies including food, water, and science experiments, returning to Earth with a gentle runway landing. 

The Huntsville Madison County Chamber has been working with the Dream Chaser team since 2015 to raise awareness and support for the space plane as a key feature of Huntsville’s commercial space economy. 

In 2017, the Chamber co-sponsored a competition with the European Space Agency to identify commercial applications for the Dream Chaser. The winner was Sustain Space, and the CEO and his team traveled to Huntsville in 2018, where they were introduced to HudsonAlpha and have been engaged with them since in advancing plant growth cycles to increase nutrition and resilience for use both on Earth and in space.

The SXSW panel delivered the message that microgravity can provide the environment for not only scientific research but also applied research and development of products that are valuable to the medical, manufacturing, and agricultural industries. 

The reduced cost and higher reliability of access to low Earth orbit enabled by commercial launch providers and on-orbit platforms will provide undeniable return on investment for companies, greatly benefiting those that are prepared to take advantage of research and development in microgravity. 

There are currently 12 FAA-licensed commercial spaceports in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. With Huntsville International Airport currently in the final stages of licensing to be the first commercial landing site for the Dream Chaser, Huntsville’s slogan “We’ve Got Space” is about to rise to an entirely new level.