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.