On Saturday, January 16 the chapter staffed a table at RustyCon, an annual science-fiction convention held this year at the Holiday Inn in Everett. I also gave a one-hour lecture titled "Mars Exploration: Past, Present, and Future". We sold some books at the table, and debuted our great full-color Mars Society brochures, sent to us from Headquarters.
Thanks to David Stuart (our chapter convention coordinator), Randy Rumley, and Chris Vancil for staffing our table. Also thanks to Terry Bacon for dropping by and lending us his Mars slides, books, and map.
My lecture went well and was videotaped by NSS Seattle member John Schlick. I had an hour to talk about how Mars Exploration had begun, from the Ancient Greeks to Percival Lowell to the Mariner probes. The part about Viking was interesting, as many of the attendees asked about the ambiguous results of the Labelled-Release experiment and the opinion of its designer, Dr. Gilbert Levin. I also covered Mars Pathfinder, the current Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Climate Orbiter, and Mars Polar Lander missions.
I underestimated how much time I would have, so I wasn’t able to cover everything. In particular, I only talked about manned missions for the final five minutes. Still, it was a success. I hope that this trial run of my lecture will help us prepare for a time when we can hold regular lectures on Mars and Mars Direct to various gatherings. Also, I plan to post the script on the website so that other chapters can make use of it.