PAST EVENTS

The meeting began by listening to Dave's radio interview on Radio SciFi. Gerry had recorded it and played it back on his computer.

Stars in the Park was rained out the night before so there was no outreach report from that event.

We discussed the progress on the Eyes on the Universe lecture we are preparing to give at the Reuben H. Fleet on May 21st. Shannon, Dave, Gerry, Jeff and John had met the night before to continue putting it together. The next and final meeting for the presentation, a dress rehearsal, is scheduled for May 14th. We have pretty much finalized the content and decided on images

UPCOMING EVENTS

Our chapter will celebrate Yuri's Night at Killer Pizza From Mars in Escondido. We'll have a table for 12 reserved at 4 pm.

This month's Mars Movie Night is April 18th and will feature "Invaders from Mars," the 1986 remake.

We discussed the April 30th Eyes on the Universe talk on sending humans to Mars. A program subcommittee meeting to continue putting the talk together will be held at 6 pm on Wednesday, April 16th at Gerry's Studio.

We briefly discussed our upcoming talks in May: The May 17th, "Living on Mars" talk about MDRS at the Reuben Fleet, and our talk on May 27 before the Shelter Island Rotary. No real planning was done for either one yet. The May 17th speakers so far are Shannon, Gerry, and Dave. Dave to moderate and introduce; Shannon to discuss her experiences at MDRS; Gerry to discuss Mission Support. More speakers are invited to volunteer, especially those who participated in Mission Support. Volunteers are also needed to help staff the display table. John Stone so far is the sole volunteer.

The San Diego Astronomy Association will be on hand on May 17th with solar telescopes, and an educational display outside.

We briefly discussed Comic-Con. We intend to have a fan table again and do at least two talks: one on the Mars Society and MDRS again; the other with guest speakers. We agreed that John McKnight should be on the guest speakers panel. We will need volunteers to staff the fan table during the day. We also need additional speakers for the guest panel.

Dave will be interviewed on radio on April 26th and June 1st. Neither program is aired locally.

UPCOMING PROJECTS

Wednesday, May 14th will be dress rehearsal for the Eyes on the Universe presentation. That will be at 6pm at Gerry's studio.

Friday, May 16th is the next Mars Movie Night. The movie is Red Planet Mars with Peter Graves. Showtime is 7 pm.

Saturday, May 17th at 1 pm we give our talk on MDRS at the Reuben Fleet. Shannon and Jonathan will be starring in that event and will talk about their experiences at MDRS this season.

Next Wednesday, May 21st at 7 pm we give our extended talk on exploring Mars at the Reuben Fleet again.

Later this month, on Tuesday morning, May 27th, Gerry and Dave will give a short talk to the Shelter Island Rotary Club on the Mars Society and our chapter.

Dave will be on radio again on June 1st. This time by telephone on a Kansas station.

After that, our next big event will be our annual appearance at Comic-Con. Comic-Con has contacted us again about putting on more panels. This year's convention is in July. We intend to have two talks again: One with a small panel of distinguished guests and at least one big name to bring in the audience, and another with just us, talking about MDRS again. So far, we have one guest for the guests panel, John Carter McKnight. We decided to call that panel discussion, Mars: Getting There From Here. A broad enough title to give the panelists plenty of leeway in making their presentations. Another panel still in the planning stages would be on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic. In addition to the panels we will have a fan table again. We could use some volunteers to staff the table during the day.

ONGOING ACTIVITIES

There is still no progress on getting an analog Mars suit for PR purposes. We can't get the patterns used by the Mars Society for their suits. We discussed simply going to a tailor with photos and getting an estimate. We also discussed how we could purchase something that we could modify. Finances could be a problem with this issue. Perhaps one of the Shelter Island Rotarians will be a tailor.

Gerry has contacted Michael Caplinger at Malin about arranging another tour of the Malin facility. No date has been set yet.

Patrick and Gerry are building a model rover. The hoped for completion date is August.

Gerry has updated our standard flyer. Gerry is also soliciting suggestions to update our display table.

John volunteered to take over Jonathan's duties as the contact person for our chapter's email address: MarsSocietySanDiego@yahoo.com

We need an answering machine for our new chapter message phone. Gerry will be taking the responsibility to keep the outgoing message up to date once we get the machine hooked up to the phone.

Gerry is redesigning the website.

Jeff agreed to contact Kelly about getting the library back from him and delivering it to our meeting room.

We agreed on purchasing a domain name of MarsSanDiego.com. We still haven't gotten a host for it yet. Jeff agreed to look into the matter some more.

NEXT MEETINGS

June 4th is the next Stars in the Park.

June 12th is the next Monthly Meeting.

June 20th is the next Mars Movie Night.

Hope to see you all then.

-Dave Rankin