13th International Mars Society Convention a Success
by Susan Holden Martin, MBA — last modified 2010-08-12 21:04
The recently completed 13th International Mars Society Convention held in Dayton Ohio, August 5-8, was a wonderful success. Despite the worst economic conditions in decades, over 200 regular conference attendees, plus 150 youngsters, turned out to hear or give presentations and participate in debates on how we can move forward to get humans to Mars in our time.
The conference was opened the morning of Thursday, August 8, with a plenary talk by Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin, who offered an assessment of the current crisis in the US space program, and how the outrage over the bizarre “flexible path to nowhere” offered by administration science advisor John Holdren has mobilized very significant political forces to demand something better. These now include a majority of the US Senate, which has recently passed an authorization bill initiating funding for the development of a heavy lift launch vehicle in defiance of the Holdren plan. Zubrin went on to detail how such a vehicle could be used to implement a Mars Direct mission strategy to enable a humans to Mars exploration program using current technology.
Following Zubrin, the next plenary speaker was William Borucki, the Principal Investigator of the Kepler mission which is searching for Earth-sized planets around other stars. Borucki thrilled the conference attendees by reporting that in its first 33 days of operation, the mission had identified hundreds of candidate signatures indicating potential Earth-sized planets orbiting stars within the constellation Cygnus. These signatures still need to be confirmed, and some will no doubt prove to be false positives, however the team is expected to have a great deal to report when it makes its official presentation of the first several months of observations at the AAAS Conference this winter.
The next speaker was Dr. Geoff Landis, of the NASA Glenn Research Center, who gave a review of six years of operation of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars.
And all that was just the first morning! Over the following four days, more than 70 exciting talks were given. A list of them can be found at:
http://www.marssociety.org/portal/c/Conventions/2010-annual-convention/2010PlenaryandTrackSchedule.pdf
Among the high points of the conference was the plenary talk given on the afternoon of Friday, August 6, by former NASA Administrator Dr. Mike Griffin, who offered a devastating systematic critique of the Obama administration space policy. Another high point was the Friday morning panel discussion entitled “The Vasimr Drive: Silver Bullet or Hoax?” (Vasimr is an acronym for Variable-Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.)
Both the Griffin talk and the Vasimr panel can be seen in video posted on the internet. The relevant links are:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOyrzUr57dE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5xMUy86WxQ
Video of additional talks will be posted soon.
On Saturday morning, attendees heard two great talks by NASA’s Dr. Carol Stoker. In the first she detailed the great value that NASA and other researchers have obtained from the use of the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station. In her second talk, Dr. Stoker detailed data taken by the Phoenix Mars Lander that indicates that the north polar region of Mars may have environments capable of supporting microbial life.
Another noteworthy event of the conference was the holding of a “Mars Camp”, which educated, entertained and inspired over 150 area youngsters with hands-on activities featuring: rockets, airplane flight simulators, and remote controlled Mars rovers. A special hit with the youngest attendees was a Mars exploration coloring book prepared for the Mars Society by professional cartoonists from The Autumn Society. The Mars Society will make this wonderful resource available to the public shortly.
Dr. Ian O'Neill, Space Science Producer for Discovery News, was Master of Ceremonies at the Saturday night banquet which was keynoted by Dr. Carolyn Porco. Dr. Porco presented the astounding results of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn. Following Dr. Porco’s talk, Dr. Zubrin took the podium and showed the attendees an article written in 1958 that reported on America’s plan to reach the Moon – by the year 2000. “That was as far in the future then as the year 2052 is to us,” Zubrin said. “Yet three years after that article was written we were on our way, and eight years after that we were there. Things can change. From a technical point of view, we are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than they were to being able to go to the Moon in 1958. We can make this happen.” He then asked for funds to help the Mars Society continue its efforts, and $11,000 was donated on the spot.
On Sunday morning, attendees heard the presentation of the Oregon State University Rover team, whose very capable Mars Rover won the TASC University Rover Challenge contest organized by the Mars Society in the Utah desert this past June. Featuring six independently powered and steerable wheels, the Oregon State rover can match the extreme maneuverability and terrain capability that has helped make NASA’s MER rover mission a great success. Another contest is planned for next year.
Attendees left the conference resolved to win the fight for heavy lift, and for a destination driven space program whose goal is to reach the Red Planet.
Additional coverage of this year's conference, including the inspirational speech given by young Hero Magnus, and the sonnet written by Doris Sutton, will be included in the fall issue of The Mars Quarterly.
We thank the Ohio Chapter of The Mars Society for their dedication and hard work in the planning of this year's convention.
Next year’s conference will be August 4-7, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. Don’t miss it!
No comments:
Post a Comment