Events/Courses - Event View

This 6-week course will provide a commentary on how mankind, first of all, learned to fly and then eventually was able to get into space. The six episodes will be as follows: Early Aeronautics; Early Rockets and Space; Vostok and Mercury; Apollos 1 to 11; Apollos 12 to 17; Space Tourism and Beyond. A particular feature of the course will be to include references to manuscripts, correspondence, books, and some audio/visuals from the presenter’s own original memorabilia and historic manuscript collection. The story begins well before any of us were around, covers a period where some of us were around but have since forgotten, and brings us up to date with the latest focus and projections. It includes something for historians, some technical matters, some human interest, and even something for dreamers.

Instructor Derek Webber is the author of five non-fiction books about the space business and exploration, based on his 50 years of experience in commercial space developments both in the UK and the U.S. He is a former space engineer and negotiated multi-million-dollar satellite communications contracts before focusing on marketing and regulatory aspects of the space tourism and lunar commerce sectors. He has been a volunteer docent at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and volunteered both as vice-chair of Judges for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, and as chair of the Lunar Commerce Working Group at the Moon Village Association, a nonprofit with Observer status at the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, based in Vienna.