Today and tomorrow Spaceport Norway am attending a conference at UCSC in Santa Cruz, Breakthrough Discuss 2022. The main mission for Breakthrough is to learn more about our universe, contribute to significant discoveries, development of science, technology and methodology, enabling us to find life in the universe.
A bit further out for us than usual, literally, our core business is a lot about the present and near future and how space can play a pivotal role in many sectors. Still, it is relevant because the challenges and opportunities are the same, reflected in the title for this conference at UCSC:
We are all looking for that. Not only in the space sector.
We would not have been here in beautiful Santa Cruz, meeting world leading scientists, innovators, technology strategists and business people, if we had not developed Spaceport Norway to raise awareness about space as a platform for innovation and new business.
Five years ago, we had just finished the first conference in Stavanger, Norway. We had almost 200 participants, most of them had to be chased and hunted, and did not pay for tickets. But we had a great program, established many valuable relations and facilitated more than one new partnership. Several of the speakers are also present here in Santa. Cruz, including Dr. Pete Worden, a central profile and catalyst for the growing and billion dollar newspace industry - and the future of space exploration.
Now, five years later, we are looking forward to the ninth Spaceport Norway conference, in Oslo 25-26 October at the Old Library. The situation is very different this time.
We continue to have instrumental support from the Norwegian Space Agency, we have a record number of sponsors in 2022, three of them are not even announced yet. We have a record number of exhibitors, we have a lot of excellent speakers that soon will be announced, and we have already reached one of our goals: getting tickets for 100 talented and relevant student financed! We take big pride in supporting the next generation talent, and are grateful for the support we now get from the industry.
This year we are going to be sold out, that will be another first.
We only have approx. 90 tickets left before we reach maximum capacity of 400 physical participants at this year's conference.
One thing is similar to 2017 though, Dr. Pete Worden, ex NASA Ames Director and chairman of the board for Breakthrough Initiatives, will be on our program in Oslo!
Stay tuned - now we are going to enjoy two days with cutting edge science, technology and breakthrough ideas for the future.
It's time to be bolder!
