Bob Hoogbruin attended the meeting as a guest. He is a former L5 Society member who was referred to us by Francis French of the Reuben Fleet Science Center.

We had a lengthy agenda so the meeting lasted from 7 to 10 pm, with individual discussions lasting up to 10:45 afterwards.

MDRS Mission Support Debriefing

The meeting began with a debriefing of our last month's experience as Mission Support for Crews 12 and 13 at MDRS. We had mixed reactions to the experience. The two CAPCOMs felt more control was necessary over who could be present in the Mission Support room on the MOO during operational hours. At times, the room was filled with many more people than were signed up for the posts. Some concerns were expressed about conversations in the room that were well off topic. It was also suggested Mission Support might better be accomplished with only CAPCOM, who would then forward questions and concerns to a team of qualified persons who would answer the questions. The feeling was that having various Mission Support slots being filled each night with the responsibility of reviewing and editing reports before they were posted to the website was not an effective use of time and personnel. A contrary view was expressed that limiting Mission Support to a CAPCOM who would route questions and problems to experts would limit the participation of Mars Society members and take away from the comraderie and feeling of contribution that comes from being able to participate in the MDRS project through Mission Support.

Our experience as Mission Support varied with each crew. Crew 12 filed many reports early each evening and maintained regular contact. Crew 13, on the other hand, typically didn't start filing reports until it was nearly time for Mission Support to sign off. This affected the support experience in that for Crew 12, Mission Support officers were very busy from the sign-on time to sign off. During Crew 13, without any reports to review and process for most of the evening led to much idle time waiting and chatting with each other on the MOO.

We were happy that, during our tour as Mission Support, for the first time in MDRS history journalist's reports written by Mission Support members were posted to the Mars Society website along with the daily reports from the habitat.

Expedition One

Shannon and Jonathan are scheduled to be at MDRS during Expedition One. Shannon will be there for two weeks during Phase III and Phase IV, March 1-March 15th. Jonathan will be there for the final week during Phase IV.

Expedition One crucially needs volunteers to act as CAPCOM for the next month and Shannon asked that some of us volunteer to help out.

Public Relations

Jeff reported on our recent PR effort. He said we appeared in 10 different outlets, including TV, radio, and newspapers. He estimated that the equivalent dollar value in advertising for this coverage came to between $10,000 to $20,000.

Examples of the coverage can be seen at the link "TMS-SD in the media" on our chapters Media webpage at http://chapters.marssociety.org/sandiego/media.html

For future PR, Jeff, Gerry, Bill and Dave volunteered to be a kind of PR Task Force to consider ways to continue the good efforts we have made so far.

Anniversary Dinner

Our chapter's first annual anniversary dinner (2nd year of chapter's existence) will be on Saturday, February 22, 2003, at 7 pm. The dinner will be at Acapulco Restaurant on Miramar Road. More information is available in the chapter website's upcoming events section.

ConDor

We will be giving a panel discussion at the CONDOR science-fiction convention again this year in Del Mar. Our panel is scheduled for March 1, 2003, at noon. Gerry, Bill, Dave, and Jeff will be on the panel, with writer Victor Koman as a guest.

Yuri's Night: April 12, 2003

We intend to host another party commemorating the anniversary of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's flight into outer space. The anniversary is April 12th, Saturday. We have not decided on a location yet. Gerry is planning the event, and Patrick and Dave volunteered to help him out.

Eyes on the Universe

We have been invited to speak at the Reuben Fleet Science Center for the Wednesday night lecture series. We are requesting, in order of preference, April 30th, 23d, and 9th. Our topic is tentatively entitled "Mars Needs Women (and Men): The case for sending humans to the red planet." Our goal will be to explain the benefit of having a goal of sending humans to Mars, the various plans for getting there, what we can do on Mars once we're there, the social implications of going, and whatever else we can think of.

Stars in the Park

We hope to have an internet link to the habitat for the next Stars in the Park outreach on March 5th, 7-9pm in Balboa Park. Shannon will be at the habitat on that date. Dave's laptop has wireless internet access, which would enable us to have a link to the habitat. We hope to have an audio link to the hab, but failing that to access the hab through the MOO. Shannon and Dave will coordinate this.

Project Astro

Gerry signed up to be an assistant to Project Astro. He will be assisting a science teacher at High Tech High in teaching astronomy to students at a local public school.

Aerospace Museum

Gerry is attempting to establish contact with the museum so we could do some kind of presentation there.

Miscellaneous

No progress has been made yet on obtaining MDRS suits. We discussed getting a small robotic rover. Patrick has some kind of small robot which he agreed to bring to an upcoming event. Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in 73,000 years. We intend to do something in conjuction with that opposition but have not yet decided on the right venue.

-Dave Rankin