Mars Society Holds Space Startup Convention and Strategies in Seattle

Crew members conduct a simulated survey at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. (Mars Society photo)

What’s the best route to the Red Planet? Hundreds of people are gathering in Seattle this week to ponder that question at the Mars Society’s annual convention. And the answer may come, at least in part, from a group of tech startups.

“The road to Mars is commercial,” James Burk, executive director of the nonprofit, told GeekWire. “The new space sector is critically important to Mars exploration, both robotic and human.”

Burk said the Mars Society’s 27th annual convention is expected to draw at least 250 to 300 people to the University of Washington starting Thursday. “We’re offering it free to University of Washington students,” he said.

Dozens of sessions are planned, focusing on topics ranging from NASA’s Mars exploration strategy to private sector concepts for Mars colonies.

There will also be an update on the company’s plans to create a Mars Technology Institute, potentially in the Pacific Northwest. The goal of the institute would be to foster startups that could develop the technologies needed for a long-term campaign to explore and colonize Mars — and make money in the process.

An artificial intelligence startup is working ahead of the institute’s launch. “We’re building a system that will allow people to do space research,” Burk said. “It’s like a space knowledge system. We also have features that are like avatars. (…) We’ll be demoing that at the conference and we’re actively soliciting investment for that.”

Other companies might focus on biotech and energy applications. “We’re just trying to support people who want to build companies around a really good idea that’s going to lead to a successful product or service — something that we could use on Earth, but that also directly helps us colonize Mars,” Burk said.

Some of the conference’s speakers are already part of the space startup world. Companies represented on the program include Marysville, Wash.-based Gravitics, which has raised millions of dollars to build space station modules; Seattle-based GravityLab (which develops satellite systems that can create artificial gravity); and Kent, Wash.-based Stoke Space, a rocket company backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Other speakers include Mars Society Founder and President Robert Zubrin; Pete Worden, president of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and executive director of the foundation’s Breakthrough Initiatives; Howard Hu, director of NASA’s Orion crew capsule program; and Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Burk emphasized that the Mars Society has a global reach. Convention attendees will be able to get updates on the society’s Mars-analog habitats in the Utah desert and the Canadian Arctic, and hear about efforts to create similar testing grounds in Africa and Mongolia.

The convention isn’t just about sitting in a conference room or watching virtual sessions on a computer screen: The program includes the premiere of a documentary about the Astro Seven Summits project; the first performance of a Verdi-inspired musical composition called “Mars Pensiero”; and a party at the Burke Museum, co-hosted by the Mars Society and Seattle Space Happy Hour.

This week’s event marks the first time the Mars Society has held its annual convention in Seattle. Could the Jet City become a Mars City, too? Burk, who has lived in Seattle since 1998 and worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, said Seattle has nearly everything it takes to become a premier stop on the road to Mars.

“We have the companies, the universities, the technology talent, the young talent. The Pacific Northwest National Lab is here. We have a legacy in aerospace,” he said. “The Redmond Space District is now the premier satellite manufacturing hub in the world. We have all the ingredients to be a global space center, except for NASA. So that’s what we want to work on as a region.”

The 27th annual Mars Society convention will take place August 8-11 at the University of Washington’s Husky Union Building. Visit the Mars Society website for program and registration information. Keynote sessions from the conference will be livestreamed on the society’s YouTube channel. Alan Boyle will moderate a virtual session at 10 a.m. PT on Friday, focusing on NASA’s Mars exploration strategy.