Major events in the last month included the first ever San Diego Mars Society barbecue at Dave's house in May. The party was a lot of fun and a nice change of pace from the usual meetings.

Other events included Gerry's appearance at Olive Elementary School with the rover and display table during which he spoke to 9 different classes.

Shannon spoke at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center about her experiences at MDRS as a crew member and a Mission Commander.

Shannon, John, Gerry and Tim traveled to the Mars Desert Research Station for an off-season maintenance and clean-up mission. Tim put in new counters in the first floor science labs.

Gerry took the MSan Diego Mars Rover out for three classes of students at the County Office of Education in Linda Vista.

Last Month's Mars Movie Night was "Total Recall", the Special Edition. The Stars in the Park outreach was completely overcast, which was unfortunate for those with telescopes out there, but it was a very busy time for our table and Mars Rover.

No one went to the JPL Open House, nor the Martian-themed Sessame Street Live performances.

We have an Mars Rover outreach planned for the Elementary Institute of Science on June 16th.

We discussed June's Mars Movie Night presented by Jeff. Jeff assembled TV episodes from the 1950s from "Tales of Tomorrow" and Walt Disney. Jeff also arranged to show a trailer from "I, Robot" as part of a public relations venue venture. Our chapter was given the trailer and 10 passes to a screening of "I, Robot" in exchange for showing the trailer at our Mars Movie Night, and putting a link on our chapter's website.

We are giving a lecture series at the Mission Valley library starting on June 21st. We discussed who would speak (Dave and Gerry). The lectures will take place at 7:00 pm on the third monday of the month and will continue through September (and possibly November). June's topic is current and past robotic missions to Mars. July's topic is the Mars Direct plan. August will be a talk by Gerry about Mars Movies. Shannon will reprise her talk about her experiences at MDRS, with additional talk about F-Mars and Mars-OZ. October's and November's topics have not been chosen.

Shannon will be participating as part of the F/MARS crew, which is scheduled to take up residence for a month on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. She then comes back to San Diego for a day before she has to leave for MARS-OZ in the Australian Outback for the MSA's "Expedition Two". These two adventures will guarantee her spot as the person with the most Mars simulation time on the planet.

We are back at Comic-Con in July. This time we are getting two one-hour time slots on Sunday afternoon at 2:00pm and 3:00pm. Greg Bear is confirmed for our panel and Dr. Michael Caplinger is aso being invited again. We're trying for one more panelist, probably a member of the JPL Mars Rover team. We will also try and get a fan table again. Volunteers to staff the table are needed.

Sadly, it doesn't look like anyone from San Diego will be attending this year's Mars Society Conference in Chicago. Shannon will be at MARS-OZ, and no one else can schedule it in.

TMS-SD has been invited to speak at the San Diego Yacht Club luncheon on September 15th.

Mars Suit: No report.

Mars Rover: The Rover is holding up well and is getting a lot of exposure during our outreach events. We've taken some telescopic photos of Mars that were donated to us by John Carter McKnight and run them through a laser printer on their back side to make a Mars Rover Driver's License -- this has proven very successful with both children and adults.

Chapter's Challenge: San Diego is far in the lead with 289 points to date. Northern California chapter has 40 points, and Los Angeles has 27.

PUBLIC RELATIONS: Jeff and Gerry were interviewed by the San Diego Reader for what turned out to be a full page article on Mars Movies.

New Display Board: Still in the works, and should be ready for Comic-Con.

Website Update: Nothing to report.

Book Sales: We still have 29 copies of "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" by William K. Hartmann for sale.

Treasury reports that we have $281.61 in the kitty.

We talked about the Moon-to-Mars hearings, which are expected to be released next week.

Patrick and John expressed an interest in attending the suborbital flight of Dick Rutan's SpaceShipOne on June 21st at the Mojave Spaceport. We can't wait for their reports.

The Mars Direct cost report, which came out a few weeks ago, was under discussion. The general concensus is that it is a reasonable, achievable cost compared to the pie-in-the-sky $500-Billion or $1-Trillion that has been bandied about by the media lately. Our job, now, is to convince the public.

There was some discussion of forming a joint Mars Society/NSS chapter. San Diego currently has no NSS chapter.

-dkr/gmw