Although this was not the first order of business we decided to change the monthly meeting day to Fridays. This means December's meeting will be held on Friday, December 12th.

Shannon has been invited to participate in NASA's Mobile Agents project that Bill Clancey is running. This project had a run at the MDRS - Mars Desert Research Station last season and will do another run this season. Shannon has already participated in a NASA teleconference on the project. We decided to have her be a featured speaker in the series we are presenting at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center's WEEKEND TALKS Lecture Series in March-May 2004. More about that below.

The San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) hosted their "STARS IN THE PARK", which went well. Gerry, Jeff, Dave, and Buddy the Mars Dog staffed our display table at the monthly astronomy event at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center . There was a good turnout and we were there until after 10 pm. Last month's conflict between the SDAA and the Park Ranger seems to have been resolved. The monthly "STARS IN THE PARK" will go on.

Last month's MARS MOVIE NIGHT movie, "Spaced Invaders" received a decidedly mixed reaction. Some thought it was amusing while others simply hated it. This month's movie, "Stranded" , promises to be a good one. Everybody come to see it on November 21.

The Mars Society - San Diego chapter did not attend the Sally Ride Science Festival at UCLA. After some discussion, we left that event to The Mars Society - Los Angeles chapter.

The Mars Society - San Diego chapter did send Gerry, Dave, Tim, and Shannon to the MDRS - Mars Desert Research Station in Utah on the weekend of October 24th-26th. Our four members delivered lab supplies, cleaned and organized the hab, helped on the extension to the greenhouse, and did other tasks. Tim assisted the BYU students and Gary Fisher from Philadelphia in constructing the extension to the GreenHab and making improvements. Tim did carpentry and labor. Dave did a little labor hauling some dirt for the new grade leading to the entrance of the greenhouse, not nearly as much as the BYU students though. Shannon brought supplies and equipment for the science lab and cleaned and organized the lab. Shannon and Dave (but mostly Shannon) also cleaned both levels of the hab, removing spoiled food, removing rat droppings, vacuuming and dusting, and organizing. Gerry did a thorough cleaning of the front airlock and suit-up area and organized the areas. Dave removed caked mud from the boots, and cleaned the gaiters and gloves. Gerry checked all the batteries and removed 58 pounds of dead batteries for proper disposal. Gerry also filmed a walk-through video of the entire habitat to be used on a future orientation video for new hab crew. Gerry and Dave shot a video of the procedure for putting on and removing an EVA suit and using the hardware associated with the suit, including the radios. Gerry shot a safety training video for operating the ATVs with Hanksvillian Don Fouts. Dave drove a truckload of garbage to town and disposed of it properly there. We inflated the flat tires on the portable generator and wheelbarrows, and helped to get the newly-repaired main generator running. You can view some photos of the weekend here in the folder called TMS-SD_MDRS.

Chapters Challenge: San Diego maintains a lead over NorCal and Los Angeles: 42-7-27. Our most recent report will give us an additional 16 or 17 points.

Mars Suit Task Force: Tim brought a helmet he is working on. It looked pretty good. He said our seamstress is getting back to work on the suit after the hiatus due to the problem with the sewing machine. We decided to work on getting the hardware done soon and not wait for the canvas suit to be finished. We have several haz/mat suits that we can use for the suit in the meantime. Tim is hoping to have the hardware done by Christmas so we can use a suit for PR when the Mars probes start arriving.

Mars Rover Task Force: Gerry has made two requests to a wireless TV camera manufacturer for a donation of their camera. Jeff gave him some advice for another try and we are going to give it another shot. If that doesn't work, we'll just buy the camera. Patrick is giving himself a deadline of December 15th to complete the rover. We hope to use the rover for the same sort of PR as the Mars Suit.

Second Display Board: Gerry bought another foamcore board but has not yet put together a display for it. He gave himself a deadline of December 15th.

Flyer update: The 2004 flyer is not yet ready. We still have plenty of 2003 flyers and will try and run through them first.

Website updated: Gerry has some ideas for changing the site's layout. In the meantime he is concentrating on keeping the site up to date. He says he has been making some upgrades to the THE MARS MOVIE GUIDE pages.

Mission Support: We've put in a request to be MDRS Mission Support for a month in December-January.

Chapter names: We discussed how to proceed on the issue regarding the Los Angeles chapter calling itself the Southern California chapter and will proceed accordingly.

Public Relations: Jeff hopes to have a press release by the next meeting to take advantage of the arrival of the Mars probes, our tour as MDRS Mission Support, and, hopefully, our having a Mars suit and a model Mars Rover.

Recruitment: We signed up 5 new email members for our mailing lists. Patrick renewed his Mars Society membership.

Domain name: Patrick took over this task and will try and get our domain name by the end of the year.

Treasury Report: $300.00

Chapter Library: We're getting a pretty good collection of material. Anybody who has chapter library books in their possession is asked to return them. If anybody has any Mars-related books, CDs, DVDs, videotapes, etc., that they'd like to donate to our library, we welcome the donation. We'd like to set up a system for loaning out material from our library to members as a way to share the wealth among members.

Jonathan Butler: We signed his "gone-away" gift and will be sending it on to him as soon as we can get his new address. jonathan was one of the co-founders of The Mars Society - San Diego chapter, and has moved to North Carolina for Graduate School.

Our Mars speaker's series at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center's WEEKEND TALKS Lecture Series is filling up. We will be presenting one speaker a month in March, April and May of 2004. We've got a speaker for the April event, Dr. Jeffrey Bada, NSCORT/Exobiology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And we are going to have Shannon talk in May 2004 about her experience with Mobile Agents project. We are still working on a few people for the March talk to kick off the series.

Friday, November 21 is Mars Movie Night. We'll be showing the Spanish/English movie "Stranded". It's about a mission to Mars. It's probably the best of the Mars mission movies that were made in the last few years. Definitely worth seeing. Mark your calendars.

Wednesday, December 3 is the next "STARS IN THE PARK". Come out with us to Balboa Park starting around 7 pm. You can talk to us and view the heavens through the telescopes provided by the San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA).

Friday, December 12 is the date for next month's The Mars Society - San Diego chapter meeting. Come join us to discuss our plans and to get to know us.

Friday, December 19 is next month's Mars Movie Night. We'll be watching the classic movie: Rocketship X-M.

January 17, 2004: We will be participating in Reuben H. Fleet Science Center's WEEKEND TALKS Lecture Series "Robot Eyes" event.

That's all folks.

-dkr