| Shannon Rupert Robles, Tim Sommer, Israel Lidsky, John Stone, James
Roth and Dave Rankin attended the April meeting.
MONTHLY RECAP
We talked about last month's
Weekend Talks lecture
that we sponsored at the Reuben Fleet Science Center with Dr. Michael Caplinger of
Malin Space Science Systems. We had 89 people attend
that talk to hear Dr. Caplinger speak about the Mars Rovers. Dave spoke for about 10 minutes
before Dr. Caplinger about the Mars Society and some of the earlier probes sent to Mars.
Gerry reported on his Science Discovery Day outreach at the elementary school in Rancho Santa
Fe. Gerry spoke to five 6th grade classes at his outreach and let the students drive the Mars Society Rover.
Gerry, John and James reported on the San Diego
Aerospace Museum's Engineering Day outreach. They took our display table and rover. The
event was aimed at young girls to encourage them to pursue engineering.
Shannon gave those who attended an insider's perspective on attending the annual meeting and
banquet of the Association of Mars Explorers. The
best part was to hear her experiences with the artificial intelligence robot being used in the
Mobile Agents project.
You should have been there to hear her stories!
UPCOMING EVENTS
These minutes will not detail the upcoming events we discussed and planned because the events
will be announced on our mailgroup
and our website.
OTHER TOPICS AND DISCUSSION ON NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TMS-SD
We were pretty much in agreement that the story in the
Los
Angeles Times Magazine by a member of one of the MDRS crews this season was not
flattering and presented the habitat project in a bad light. The story was too focused on the
writer's personal experiences dealing with the hardships of living at the hab and spoke too
little about the project itself.
We also discussed making changes in our local chapter's activities. Our chapter, as a group,
has mostly focused on outreach. Shannon has done a lot for MDRS and our chapter has also done
mission support each year. However, the bulk of what we do is aimed at PR, education and
outreach. We recognize that not every Mars Society member in San Diego is interested in or
suited for doing outreach. Several of us do like doing outreach and are pretty good at it. So,
outreach will continue to be a part of what TMS-SD does. However, we are very interested in
exploring some new directions for the chapter and welcome input from other local members who'd
like to be involved. Possible changes in direction will be discussed at the next meeting on
May 14th, which will be a potluck at
Dave Rankin's House. (Look for directions to Dave's house
and more details in the
announcement
already sent to the mailgroup.)
-Next year on Mars!
-dkr
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