From Ted Semon at The Space Elevator Blog
November 15th, 2008
“ISEC promotes the development, construction and operation of a space elevator as a revolutionary and efficient way to space for all humanity”
This is the mission statement of the newly formed International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), an organization created to encourage the growing international interest and momentum towards building a Space Elevator. Several attendees at the recent Space Elevator Conference in Seattle talked about pooling their efforts to get such an effort underway and, after a false start or two, we’ve now succeeded in forming this Consortium.
We have incorporated as a non-profit corporation in the State of California and are now working on establishing our Federal 501c3 status (and for those of you who would like to point out how difficult this is, I’d just like to say that IRS Form 1023 and I are old friends 
).
Several groups have joined together in this effort; The Spaceward Foundation, The Japan Space Elevator Association, EuroSpaceward, The Space Elevator Reference and this Space Elevator Blog. In addition to these groups, several other individuals (both long-timers in the Space Elevator community and newcomers from the Seattle conference) have joined this Consortium.
Yours truly has been chosen as the President of this organization; an honor which I find very humbling and exciting at the same time. I have lots of plans to aggressively grow this organization and make no mistake about it; our goal is nothing less than to get a Space Elevator built.
You will be hearing much, much more about this organization in the near future so stay tuned. In the meantime, I encourage you to head to the ISEC website and sign up for our newsletter so you can stay current with all of our efforts.
Posted by jplspace
at 9:27 AM EST
Raising Money For Space Activities
The recent Space Elevator Conference (July 18, 19, & 20) was a huge success in the minds of the attendees. The inclusion of a Japanese group added an international flavor and a new slant on what the elevator should look like. See http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com for more information.
Raising money for the conferences and other space activities remains a challenge. One new idea that came out of the conference was that of using GoodSearch to allow any and all space enthuaist to help raise money. The idea was presented by the JPL Space Foundation who
believe that there are thousands, if not millions of space enthusiasts who share our dream of finding an affordable, reliable and safe access to space and would help make affordable access to space a reality if only they could find a way. We think we have found a way that we all can do something to help raise money. There is a new search engine called Good Search which is powered by Yahoo that will contribute one cent to a charity of your choice every time you use Good Search to look up anything on the web. All you need do is go to: http://www.jplspacefoundation.org and click the Good Search Banner and download the Good Search "search bar" when you get to their site. Choose JPL Space Foundation as your Charity, if it doesn’t show up automatically and then surf the web as usual using Good Search. All proceeds will be used to support research for the Space Elevator and any other technology that will allow us to reach space at an affordable cost. Also, if you shop on-line a good deal, just click the Good Search logo on the search bar and then the Good Shop link and again choose JPL Space Foundation as your charity and you can shop from Amazon to Sears to Wal-Mart and many others. A percentage of your purchase will go to support the Foundation. I know a few percent or a few cents per person isn't much, but all of us together and all our friends that might like to help can make a big difference over time. It’s not what we do that matters, but how many of us that do it.
I think there are many people who would love to learn of a way they could help advance our efforts to explore space on a faster schedule.
1000 people at 2 clicks/day equals from $7000-$25,000 per year including shopping.
John Lee
JPL Space Foundation
Posted by jplspace
at 12:46 PM EDT
