Guest: Dr. Burton Lee. Topics: European Commission Space Research Program (ECSRP) and European space consortia for American space companies. We welcomed back Dr. Burton Lee to discuss the European Commission Space Research Program for American space companies and the upcoming July 21, 2010 Stanford University Open Meeting for business and university researchers interested in applying for limited European Commission grant funds in areas such as cubesats, space transportation and propulsion systems, robotic exploration technologies, and NEOs. You can find out more information about his organization and its place in the FP7 European Commission CORDIS at http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/cooperation/space_en.html. In our first segment, Dr. Lee provided us with the basic information about the European Commission Space Research Program and the European Framework 7 Program (see http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/home_en.html). In this discussion, we learned about the relationship of this organization with ESA and the fact that the ECSRP has a total budget of about 200 million Euros as compared to ESA's budget of 3745 million Euros. We learned that American companies wanting to participate in the program need to work through a European consortium that manages the program, applies to the ECSRP with their version of an RFP and disburses the funding to the consortium members, including the American company. We also learned that maintaining geographical diversity is important in grant approval and allocation. As we started the second segment, a listener asked Dr. Lee what was in it for an American company to participate in the program given the level of funding was small and that a European company/university had to be the lead on the team and the project manager. As you will hear, Dr. Lee said that the European space community was developing, expanding, and growing. U.S. companies see this as a way to get a foothold in this emerging and important space market. Dr. Lee also talked about the Framework 7 Protocols. Listeners asked Burton about space entrepreneurship and the commercial sector in Europe. You will definitely want to hear what our guest had to say about this space sector as applied to European space development. We then talked about the upcoming July 21, 2010 conference held at Stanford University from 8:30AM to 12:30 PM with a networking reception following the session. Limited open seating is available so if you are interested in attending, you need to contact Dr. Lee by email as soon as possible to get the information and have it processed by representatives of the European Commission. If interested, please send your email to Dr. Burton Lee at blee@stanford.edu. Make sure you tell him you heard him on The Space Show. Dr. Lee was also asked about this program being made available to other space oriented nations. He said South Africa and Russia were involved in the program before the United States but did not know about other nations. Another topic Burton told us about focused on intellectual property (IP) brought to the consortium by the American company or developed in cooperation with the specific consortium members. In the third segment, we inquired about the use of a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) to protect the U.S. company IP. We also talked about the ECSRP having an interest in appealing to the general public rather than just the targeted organizations and companies. Toward the end of the program, I asked Burton for his assessment on the space economy in the U.S, specifically in the entrepreneurial and startup fields. His economic and financial assessment was most interesting and informative. You will certainly want to hear it. For questions and comments, please direct them to Dr. Lee's email address above.
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The Space Show
