SDAA's "STARS IN THE PARK" Telescope Night outside the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park on the first Wednesday of the month was a good outreach opportunity for us. Dave Rankin, John Stone and Gerry Williams talked with about 30 people and passed out our flyers. The sky was pretty clear, so we had a good crowd with plenty to see.

The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park permitted TMS-SD to set up our display in the Exhibits Gallery in conjunction with their Weekend Talk lecture series. Jonathan Butler, Jesse Clark, Dave Rankin, Shannon Rupert-Robles, James Roth, Aurora Rupert, John Stone, and Gerry Williams crewed the booth from 11:00am to 2:30pm (Gerry also made up TMS-SD name badges). Most of us got to sit in on the Weekend Talk lecture. As a thank you, the Fleet gave us complementary passes to see the IMAX Space Station film (for those who didn't see the film on that day, see Gerry for your comp passes). The Fleet also provided us with discounts for food and the gift shop as well. A fun time was had by all.

With regard to the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, we haven't heard anything about Dennis Mammana's "Eyes on the Universe" lecture series, but we are scheduled as the guest speakers for our second generation presentation of the "M.A.R.S. Desert Research Station" as part of their "WEEKEND TALKS" lecture series on Saturday, May 17th. We'll have had a second season of the MDRS under our belts by then.

ConJecture, San Diego's newest annual Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, is coming up on the weekend of October 18-20. We discussed our audio-visual presentation we'll be giving on the MDRS (the same presentation we gave at Comic-Con in August). Dave, John, Shannon, Jonathan and Gerry will be guest lecturers. Not much else could be known yet, as the Convention is still being put together. Gerry will be printing up our new updated half-page flyers for the Con.

Jesse found out about the special Mars Society Half-Price membership offer for us: When we host an event (any outreach event, our meetings, Mars Movie Night -- whatever) we can pass out discount membership applications that give a 50% discount (i.e., $25.00 for an individual) if they sign up within one week of our event. TMS wants us to collect the monies and send them in, but that will be up to the individual members at the event whether we do it that way or have the people just send their check in directly to TMS.


MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION - SECOND FIELD SEASON

San Diego will be participating in MDRS again this year.

MDRS will activate on October 26, 2002 and run through April 30, 2003. Shannon was selected as Expedition One's Chief Biologist, and will lead a team of eight biologists throughout the one month mission. ExOne is multi-national, with the Mars Society Canada's Rocky Persaud as Principal Investigator and Jonathan Clarke of Australia as Chief Geologist. Four of the biologists are from San Diego: Shannon, who will be returning to the Hab for the final two phases (a phase is ten days) of the mission and Jonanthan, who will also be there for the final phase, are members of the San Diego Chapter. Two additional San Diegans, Vuong Nyguen and Crista DiBernardo, will be participating, Vuong during phases one and two and Crista during phase 2.

In addition to this involvement, our chapter will again be operating as MDRS Mission Support during the January 15 to February 15, 2003 time frame, for two crew rotations. We'll be working out the details at next month's meeting, but have decided to run a "Virtual Mission Support", recuiting Mars Society members from all over to serve as mission support personnel using the MOO system online.

The following month, Shannon will also be heading up the "Biology Backroom" Mission Support for "Expedition One", which will be based out of San Diego.

It looks like it'll be an interesting year coming up. :-)


MERCHANDISING

Our Mars San Diego web store at Cafe Press sent us a check for $11.00 for the quarter's profits. Remember, we're only making $1.00 on each item sold. Cafe Press has come up with some additional items we can sell; Gerry will look into designing the graphics for things like a wall clock, lunch box, license plate frames, flying disks and 16"x20" and 23"x35" posters. Additionally, there are some discounts going on right now at our web store -- check it out.

During our Reuben Fleet Science Center outreach, Dave found some Mars postcards in the gift shop. He'll be contacting the manufacturer of these cards to see about a bulk discount for us to sell during our outreach activities. We also discussed printing up our own bumperstickers, as well as TMS-SD T-shirts with the "Mars - Its Not Just For Robots!" motto atop the Hubble Mars Opposition image.

Speaking of bumperstickers, Gerry was able to purchase a dozen 2-1/2" x 11" black, red and white bumperstickers that say:

Gerry brought out the revised half-page flyers for the chapter to critique. The big change was isolating all the San Diego information on one side of the flyer, and all the generic Mars Society information on the other side. Everyone suggested some wording changes, and Gerry will make the corrections and print up a new batch in time for ConJecture.

One topic that came up a few months ago was that we branch out to form a National Space Society chapter in San Diego -- holding joint meetings and in general becoming more of an umbrella organization for space advocacy in south Southern California. There is no NSS chapter in San Diego, and only three people are required to form one. This discussion met with a favorable response and we'll be talking about it more next month.

We discussed TMS's "Operation: Congress" briefly, but we've tabled any further talk until the next meeting.

We also postponed discussion of our involvement with the "Adopt-a-Highway" program for next month.

Shannon suggested to the chapter that, on Saturday, February 1, 2003 we hold an Anniversary Dinner for our chapter as we begin our third year. We talked restaurants, and settled for the Acapulco Restaurant in Old Town. We can invite our significant-others, hold an awards ceremony, and in general celebrate the best chapter in the Mars Society.

The Mars Movie Night will be on the 25th this month, featuring Cameron Mitchell in the 1951 film, "Flight to Mars". 7:00pm at Gerry's studio. November's film is "Capricorn One". Gerry also mentioned that he's been able to obtain a copy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 take-off on "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" for our December Mars Movie Night.

The meeting adjourned at 9:15pm.

As usual, if anyone has any changes or addendum to these meeting minutes, please drop an e-mail to Gerry and he'll update them accordingly.