The Mars Society - San Diego Chapter.
The Mars Society - Join Us!

to find blue hope
just scratch
the red surface

-- Bettina Davis
May 2002

MARS SOCIETY LINKS

THE MARS SOCIETY
Main Home Page

FMARS
3rd Season Now Active!

EURO-MARS
On Display at Alder Planetarium, Chicago through Summer

MDRS
2nd Season Begins in October

Chapter Council

Other Chapters

San Diego - Red Planet Satellite Report

Mars Society - Operation Congress



SAN DIEGO CHAPTER LINKS

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MARS SAN DIEGO
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TMS-SD Bios
(coming soon)

TMS-SD in the
San Diego
Union-Tribune

TMS-SD on
KUSI-TV
(QuickTime - 2.7MB)

TMS-SD HISTORY & NEWS: 2002



OTHER LINKS

Suggested Reading

Comic-Con International 2002 Convention

ConDor IX SciFi Convention

ConJecture SciFi Convention

ESA - Mars Express

Exobiology at UCSD

Malin Space Science Systems

Mars Daily

MarsNews.Com

NASA/JPL Mars Exploration

National Space Society CD

Open Space Exploration Initiative

Radio Free Mars

Ray Bradbury Online

Reuben H. Fleet Science Center

San Diego Astronomy Association

Space.Com

Space Daily

Spaceflight Now

SpaceRef.Com

think mars

X Prize Foundation


THE MARS SOCIETY - SAN DIEGO
(TMS-SD) CHAPTER

"The Earth is the Cradle of Mankind,
but one does not live in the cradle forever."

-- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1895

SPECIAL COMIC-CON PLANNING MEETING #2 MINUTES:


July 28, 2002, 6:30pm at Studio 106.

In attendance: Jonathan Butler, John and Carol Stone, Tim Sommer, Dave Rankin and Gerry Williams.


COMIC-CON FAN TABLE

Comic-Con is supposed to send us information regarding our fan table, but we have not received anything to date. I did find out that it is an 8-foot table against the back wall in Section D of the convention center main hall. I wont be able to know any more until we show up on Wednesday night to set up. There are electrical outlets every 20 feet against the wall. WeÕll need to bring UL-approved power cords (the Fire Marshals are very strict) and a surge suppressor so we can run our PowerPoint presentations from a monitor on top of the table in a loop from a computer placed under the table beneath the skirting.

We discussed the layout of the backdrop of the table. The left panel (2-feet wide) will be dedicated to Mars itself, with recent images regarding the surface and underground water details. The middle section (4-feet wide) will show The Mars Society's projects: Mars Analog Research Stations (FMARS, MDRS and EuroMARS), Pressurized Rover projects, Mars Balloon, and the TransLife project, and information on the Mars Direct approach. The left panel (2-feet wide) will display the San Diego Chapter's information, including our Outreach and Education tasks (like the ÒStars in the ParkÓ and Sci-Fi Conventions), our monthly meetings, our Mars Movie Night events, and our involvement with MDRS. Naturally we'll post our Comic-Con panel schedule prominently. The panels, by the way, are 4-feet in height from the top of the table.

We've decided to design this table to be mostly unattended during the Con, but also allow any of our members to "man" it for a more hands-on public outreach. We'll set up an informal crew rotation list for table coverage.

Flyers and new TMS-SD business cards will be available for taking, and we'll have some other tabletop displays available for when the booth is manned.


"MARS ANALOG RESEARCH STATIONS (MARS)" PANEL

When: Friday, August 2, 2002 at 12:30pm to 2:00pm in Room 7B. The TMS-SD crew is to meet outside the room 30 minutes before the scheduled panel start time to coordinate and expedite the event. We found that we'll be the second event of the day in this room, so we'll have to coordinate the set-up and strike carefully.

Our guests will be our own chapter's members, in the following order: Dave Rankin will moderate the panel and make introductions after a 5-minute PowerPoint presentation that introduces The Mars Society and our San Diego Chapter. Gerry Williams will start with a short film of MDRS and what's going on there. Jonathan Butler will talk about designing a biology experiment to be performed at the Hab. Shannon Rupert-Robles will talk about her time at the Hab. Dave Rankin, John Stone and Jonathan Butler will discuss MDRS Mission Support. We'll then open the panel up for questions from the floor. And we'll have a PowerPoint presentation available for explaining the construction of the Hab in case the audience wants to know. There will be a standard TMS-SD slide on the screen with our website when we're not projecting anything else. Tim Sommer will be providing audio-visual support, and Rich Loesch will be videotaping the panel for us again this year.

Naturally, we'll shamelessly plug our Sunday panel event before we let anyone leave the room.


"MARS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE PANEL

When: Sunday, August 4, 2002 at 11:00am to 12:30pm in Room 7B. The TMS-SD crew is to meet outside the room 30 minutes before the scheduled panel start time to coordinate and expedite the event. We found that we'll be the second event of the day in this room again, so we'll have to coordinate the set-up and strike carefully.

Our confirmed Guests are: LARRY NIVEN, author of "Rainbow Mars" and "Ringworld" (among others); futurist JOHN CARTER MCKNIGHT who pens "The Spacefaring Web"; from Malin Space Science Systems, Mars Orbital Camera project scientist DR. MICHAEL CAPLINGER; SpaceDev's founder JAMES W. BENSON; and "Climbing Olympus" and Star Trek/Star Wars writer KEVIN J. ANDERSON. Dave will moderate the panel. Gerry will be providing audio-visual support, and Rich Loesch will be videotaping the panel for us again.

The structure of the panel will be Dave Rankin moderating the panel and making introductions after a 5-minute PowerPoint presentation that introduces The Mars Society and our San Diego Chapter. Each guest will have 5-10 minutes to talk. John Carter McKnight will lead off, followed by Kevin Anderson, Larry Niven, Mike Caplinger, and finally Jim Benson. Dave will ask some questions to get the panel discussion going, and we'll end with audience questions.


GENERAL NOTES

Dave will be coordinating through e-mail a set of Quick Reference Notes that our chapter's panelists can refer to when questions are asked from the audience. References such as physical characteristics of Mars (distance, size, temperature, air pressure, gravity, etc.); Hab construction costs and operational budgets; Mars Direct and Semi-Direct statistics; other Mars Society projects; and why we should colonize Mars instead of the Moon Ð things along this line. Please e-mail Dave your favorite and most frequently asked questions.

Gerry, Dave and Tim (and presumably Shannon) will all have cell phones available during the Con for any coordination and last-minute decision-making. Their numbers will be distributed prior to the Con.

If anyone else has any comments regarding these meeting notes, please send them to Gerry Williams for posting to our website.

As usual, for the latest information and event scheduling, check out our website at:
http://chapters.marssociety.org/sandiego/

NOTE: Since our next Monthly meeting is normally scheduled for the Monday immediately after the Mars Society Convention, it was decided that we'd push it forward a couple of days to Thursday, August 15th at 7:00pm so that we might get our members who went back in town for a report on the goings-on in Boulder.


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Please e-mail us at marssocietysandiego@yahoo.com

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