May's meeting was sparsely attended by John, Jonathan, Jeff, Gerry,
Dave, and Dustin McBeth. Dustin came to the meeting for the first time. He had met us before
at Condor 2003.
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
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