September 2004
From RmmsWiki
General Meeting - September, 2004
The Mars Society is launching a fund drive in conjunction with a membership contest for local chapters to increase monies for more projects and members for greater political and legislative influence.
Molly is the new CU student representative for the Chapter and is looking for others to join especially because nexr year's convention will be in Boulder at CU.
Brad Jarvis reminded everybody that next month's meeting will include the nomination of Board members. He and Tony Muscatello have reached the limits of their terms, so there will be two vacancies. Volunteers are welcomed and needed. Brian Enke and Tony Muscatello. shared the floor for most of the meeting to talk about their observations from the convention in Chicago. A summary of the plenary and other guest speakers and their talks can be found on the Mars Society website for greater depth and detail than will be offered here. Squyres talk about the rovers' mission and the need for follow-up human exploration; the Admiral's input re: the needed change and evolution of NASA's corporate culture and mission; Clancey's reports about the ongoing development od telerobotics and joint human-robot interfacing as demonstrated at MDRS; Horowitz's feedback of the necessity for manned presence in space e.g., the Hubble repair mission and continued exploration beyond the ISS, all indicated recognition of the need and desire for a coherent, realistic and space-breaking paradigm of exploration and development. The attendance of 400 plus people and great mass media coverage certainly helped raise a high profile for the conference and the Mars Society mission which was emphasizing a coherent and flexible Moon-as steppingstone-to-Mars planning and test-bed for hardware development and mission architecture, rather than allow a Moon-only or Moon-as-primary launch site become black hole for monies and political will. Of course an ongoing and intensive effort of political outreach with local and federal officials will be necessary for the NASA funding and culture change to continue and the flow of monies and support to make man-to-Mars a reality in our lifetime.
The banquet, auction, awards for contest winners and especially the music competition were well received and all agreed to be of high quality and will be continued into the next year. Discussion about Cameron's soon-to-be-released IMAX movie about life on the deep-sea hydrothermal vents and their ecologies, the continuing rumors (and hope) of his Mars-based feature movie; along with Sam Burbank's planned filming of Zubrin's First Landing novel; the upcoming X-Prize competition looking more likely to soon be won by Rutan's Spaceship One; other business ventures being planned for a variety of space-based businesses, and generally increasing awareness and feasibility of space travel in the near future augured optimism that our culture can be further encouraged to support and force manned space exploration and development. Brad described Project ASTRO, a program that the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is sponsoring to promote education about space in the schools. This is a program that members of RMMS may want to get involved with.
