March 2005
From RmmsWiki
General Meeting - March, 2005
In attendance; Farin W., Dewey A., Ray M., Brian E., Tony M., Brad J., Eric B., Jim W.
In preparation for the upcoming Mars Society Convention this summer some lengthy discussion occurred about forming a CU/Boulder chapter of the Mars Society and how it would be related to RMMS as well as to the CU student organizations. It was decided that it could be called the Boulder Mars Society and considered a subchapter of RMMS which would give us the flexibility of having a student organization (with it's attendant advantages) along with the advantage of the larger numbers of RMMS as a regional chapter. This was being followed up by Farin and Dewey as current CU students who will also look into various already-existing science and engineering student orgs and groups who might naturally fall into the Mars Society orbit.
We discussed what a five to ten minute pitch to these various groups during one of their monthly meetings would need to have as minimum info to be comprehensive and enticing. Some of the factoids that should be included were that the Mars Society is an international one comprising 7,000 members around the world, founded in '98 from the pre-existing Mars Underground; using the Mars Reference Mission, Case for Mars and Mars Direct as templates for exploration/settlement paradigms; the use of FMARS and MDRS (with EuroHab constructed and waiting in the wings) for simulated missions and real-world scientific/engineering experiments; spacesuit design, GreenHab and resource recycling, rover and communications development; with resource lists for further reading including TV and radio broadcasts, websites, articles (general interest and science journals), books and novels for greater perusal. Brian distributed some spare ARES DVDs that he had to facilitate with that outreach effort on campus. Good luck and much thanks to Dewey and Farin in their efforts towards recruitment.
The guest speaker was Eric B., who gave a talk and powerpoint show about the efforts currently underway for heavy-lift capabilities by NASA and it's subcontractors. These included the EELVs (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles) from Lockheed Martin's Atlas V and Boeing's Delta IV which could become true heavy-lifters in the next generations; the SDV (Shuttle Derived Vehicles) including the Shuttle C, Z and Ares; and the possible redesigned (and reengineered) Saturn V; and a CSV (Clean Sheet Vehicle) which would be a new design from the ground up and probably prohibitively expensive if done by the usual specs plus cost (overruns) model. Wild cards could include Elon Musk's Falcon series, a space elevator, beamed power, Project Prometheus revisited, maybe Rutan's Scaled Composites. It was generally agreed that we need a true heavy-lift ship specifically designed for manned space exploration and not just robotics missions or the whole space program will lose its audience and support. It was also agreed that to keep NASA and the funding legislators true and on-course that we should continue to educate, advocate and agitate.
