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Chapter meeting
The Winnipeg Chapter holds its monthly meetings in Winnipeg, but membership is open to all residents of Manitoba.
Chapter meetings are held monthly on the third Friday of each month at 7:00pm. Location is Pendragon Games and Hobbies, Main St. & Cathedral. To join the Winnipeg Chapter, send an email to or just show up at the next meeting. To become a member of the Mars Society Canada, click on Join Now. There are no separate dues for chapter membership, and individuals who have not purchased a membership are welcome to attend.

Next Meeting:
Saturday, April 18, 2008, at 7:00pm
Pendragon Games and Hobbies, Main St. & Cathedral. Meeting room is downstairs; use the side door from the sidewalk along Cathedral, downstairs into the foyer then through the west door into the main meeting room. Foyer door should be open.

Last Event:
Sci-Fi Saturday was held at the Millenium Library on Saturday, April 13 at 3:00pm. Robert Dyck gave a presentation on Practical Space. The media often asks why spend money on the Canadian Space Agency, this presentation demonstated that most of the work done by CSA is for practical benefit here on Earth. You can view the PowerPoint presentation by clicking here. As always, the slides are mostly pictures but you can view the notes to read what the talk was about. Download the presentation to your computer by right-clicking the link (the word "here") then left click "save target as". Save it to your computer, such as your desktop. Double click to open in PowerPoint. Once PowerPoint opens, click View on your menu bar, then click "Notes Page".

Upcoming Events:

Keycon 2008
Friday-Monday, May 16-18, will be Keycon — Winnipeg's science fiction and fantasy convention. This is a great opportunity for outreach, to promote our club. Keycon has extensive programming tracks, including a track of science presentations. This year Professor Gerald Gwinner, an atomic/nuclear physicist at the University of Manitoba, he will give a talk on his recent test of Relativity. Pat Montgomery of the St. Boniface Research Hospital will speak about aging. Dr. Michael Attas of AECL will give a talk on gamma ray imaging. Although the Mars Society has given presentations at Keycon since 2002, this year we will have a Convention Hospitality Suite called a ConSuite. We need volunteers to set-up and staff the ConSuite. Come to this month's meeting to help organize it.

Comic Con 2008
Saturday & Sunday, October 11 & 12
I know, October is a long way off, but we have another great outreach opportunity. Comic Con has offered a free table in the dealers room for any club that provides at least 2 volunteers to help setup and tear-down. They had about 8,000 people come through their convention last year, and hope to get 15,000 this year. They were in the Victoria Inn last year, but this year they will be in the 3rd floor of the convention centre. Although they existed a couple years ago, last year was the first "full blown" convention, with media guests including David Prowse, the actor who played Darth Vader. This year they have John Delancie, the actor who played "Q" on Star Trek, Lou Ferrigno who played "The Hulk", and others. Convention attendees don't stay as long as at Keycon, but Keycon gets about 500 people so Comic Con will let us meet a whole lot of people. This should help us grow the club.

Projects
Web pages for several projects have been created. These projects are also available to all members of the Mars Society. The Existing Russian rockets web page is informational, but all other projects are intended for member participation. The projects are:

• Mars chemistry set - developing a student's kit to conduct many of the chemistry described on this website
• MCP spacesuit - to promote the club and demonstrate what is Mechanical Counter Pressure, we're making an analogue suit for demonstrations
• Dish array Deep Space ground station - an array of surplus analogue satellite TV dishes to receive data from NASA probes orbiting Mars
• Ion engine - a reduced size version of NASA's ion engine, intended for a micromission probe to Mars
• Greenhouse - soil simulant and enclosure; design an inflatable structure for Mars that can grow plants on Earth in winter
• Chloroplast - designing a biochemical machine to manufacture carbohydrate using photosynthesis
• Mars Bogs - Converting bedrock into arable soil. A technique that can be used in Manitoba as well as Mars