Gerry's Notes on TMS-SD Meeting, October 4th 2001

Who:  Gerry Williams, Kelly Jernigan, Groff Bittner, Andrew Solomon, 
Dave Rankin, and John Stone. We met at my photography studio in
Golden Hill at 7:00pm.

We discussed the lack of response to our queries for the San Diego 
Chapter to perform Mission Control functions for a month for the Utah 
Habitat -- it seems the coordinators are not responding.  Kelly has 
configured one room of his house with three computers on a cable
modem hub in preparation for us participating.  We discussed that 
November (the first month of Utah hab operation) would be the best 
month, with January as our second choice.  Groff and Kelly have been 
designated to head the Mission Control committee and to wheedle a 
response from the coordinators.

Gerry is meeting with astronomer Dennis Mammana at the Reuben H.
Fleet Space Theater in Balboa Park next week.  We're trying to see if
TMS-SD can coordinate an outreach with the Fleet for the Mars Odyssey
orbital Insertion on October 24th.  We're also trying to get a
foothold in the Space Theater as a group they can use whenever 
something Mars comes up (like presentations, guest speakers, etc. in 
their lecture hall -- all open to the public), similar to the 
relationship the San Diego Astronomy Association has with the Space 
Theater.

In a related note, the first Wednesday of every month, the Fleet
Space Theater holds two "The Sky Tonight" shows in their planetarium 
dome with Dennis Mammana lecturing (7:00pm and 8:00pm), with the San 
Diego Astronomy Association having an Open-Telescope Night (Stars in 
the Park) out on the plaza below the fountain starting at 7:30pm -- 
last one I attended had over 30 telescopes of all different sizes).
We discussed doing a Mars outreach at the next one (which would be 
November 7th), with our members showing up in Mars T-shirts (more on 
this later), talking to people (both the astronomers and the public), 
passing out flyers, and having a laptop with MARS films and
PowerPoint presentations running on it.  This could end up being a 
regular venue for us.

Great news:  Dr. Michael Caplinger (one of our Comic-Con guest 
panelists) has agreed to host a TMS-SD meeting at Malin Space Science 
Systems.  I'm currently discussing with him about arranging this for 
the November 1st TMS-SD meeting.  The only restrictions at this time 
are that we'd be limited to 12 TMS-SD members and guests.  EVERYONE
at the meeting signed up with me at that time for this event.  So 
anyone else wanting to be included, please let me know right away -- 
FIRST COME FIRST SERVE - ACT NOW!

Andrew has volunteered to contact Jim Benson's SpaceDev in Poway
about hosting a TMS-SD meeting (possibly in December).

Dave will be talking with Dr. William Baity (another of our Comic-Con 
guest panelists) of NSCORT/Exobiology at UCSD about hosting our
TMS-SD early next year, probably when school is in session (February/
March/April).

We discussed next year's Comic-Con TMS-SD ideas:  We'd like to
produce TWO panels this time during the Con.  So start thinking about 
what the panels would be about.  (One thought was to have some kind
of live link with the Flashline Artic research station on Devon Island
-- I volunteered to look into the networking capability at the
Convention Center to see if this is feasible -- we'll discuss this
and more at our next meeting.)  Everyone is going to consolidate our 
ComicCon contacts list for this so we can approach prospective 
panelists a lot earlier than last year. We're also looking into
the possibility of getting an information booth in the huckster hall
-- we'll have to float a Helium filled Mars/Barsoom balloon so
people can find us (pun intended) in the crowd! We'll ramp up pulling 
this together the first of next year. Comic-Con will be held on
August 1st thru 4th, 2002. 

AZMARS, our Arizona Mars Society neighbors, have wonderful black Mars 
T-shirts available for $15.00.  I'm talking with them about quantity 
discounts. Groff made a count of those at the meeting who would want 
them.  We're thinking of making a purchase as soon as possible.  The 
shirts can be seen at: http://www.MarsGraphics.com/  Kelly also 
mentioned a MSCanada (Toronto?) group that had T-shirts available,
too.

All this talk of T-shirts brought up the possibility of us designing 
and printing our own for TMS-SD.  The recent Hubble picture of Mars
was quite popular, and Dave suggested the slogan,  "MARS: Its Not Just
For Robots".  NOTE:  If you have an idea for a slogan, please post it
here for discussion with the group.  In the meantime, I'll check out 
the prices for printing them.

Other topics of discussion included the recent upheaval in the Mars 
Society board of directors and steering committee with the
resignations of Marc Boucher, Eric Tilenius and Kim Stanley Robinson; 
and their subsequent replacement by Penelope Boston & Gregory
Benford; doing mid-course corrections with a spinning tethered system 
in flight; different hab construction ideas (other than the classic 
Tuna Can); Mars dust as SuperCement when accidentally hydrated with 
water vapor from the airlocks; Meghan Ribbens, the self-proclaimed 
First Martian; Nick Adolfo and his First Man on Mars Site; and the 
Discovery Channel's "Mars on Earth" special about the Flashline Artic 
Research Station airing on November 7th.

We ended up this meeting by watching a handful of JPL Mars videos
that I'd downloaded (which is what sparked the idea of taking a
laptop to the Stars in the Park event), including the first three of a
continuing series on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

Whew!  If I've forgotten anything, or if there were topics that
didn't get brought up, please post it here for discussion.

On to Mars!

P.S.:  The http://chapters.marssociety.org/SanDiego/ is operational 
again.