Exhibition at the World Space Congress 2002

The joint World Space Congress 2002 of the 34th COSPAR and the 53rd IAF and its concurrent Exhibition were held from October 12 to 19 in Houston, Texas, where 20,000 people participated.
The Exhibition was held in a wide space of 32,500m2, where 350 companies and institutions exhibited. Among them, a group of booths presented by NASA, which occupied half of the whole area, was very impressive. They brought in many engines of space shuttles and module models of the space station and every field center of NASA participated in the exhibition, which is just what one would expect of a local host. Another exhibit that attracted considerable attention was a restored model plane of the Wright brothers.

The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science participated in the exhibition presenting a Japanese booth together with National Space Development Agency and National Aerospace Agency just as we did in the IAF last year. During the first half of the Exhibition, there were lots of business activities among people and firms related to the convention. It was open to the public only for the last two days. There were not so many visitors compared to other exhibitions I have participated in other countries. This is probably due to the nature of locality of Houston. Space may not be a fresh, attractive topic for the people living there. However, many people showed great interest to our origami demonstration, which seemed to have become an annual event, and the scene often looked like an origami workshop. The total number of visitors to the Exhibition was 7,000.

January 24, 2003