April 2006
From RmmsWiki
General Meeting - April, 2006
In attendance: Brian E., Brad J., Ray Mc C., Mike C., Jim W.
Brian brought in various articles about VSE, NASA, and the moon &/or Mars missions, and budgetary constraints and wranglings and implications for the future re: human and robotic space explorations of the inner and outer planets. The slashing of research/analysis in the NASA budget seemed particularly problematic and short-sighted, and other big-ticket items such as the Mars Sample Return, Terrestrial Planet Finder, and others are potentially at risk as well. The Webb Space Telescope is already a billion dollars over budget and the Shuttle and ISS continue to be funding black holes. There was some hope in that the pure-science, robotics and human exploration proponents seem to be supporting each other and more cooperative than they've been in the past and looking at collaborative joint efforts to maximize their funds and results.
There was some discussion of an Australian group's X-Prize-like competition for a Mars Sample Return Mission with Zubrin, McKay and Freeman as judges, as well as wider-ranging talk about how free enterprise and private businesses can be brought more into space exploration and development to cooperate with, compete with or even substitute for big government projects. Also discussed were various Mars and space-related websites including google.Mars, jmars, whirlwind mars, Einstein@home, and even How to Write the Breakthrough Novel chat room/feedback/critique forum for new authors.
