> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [marssocietynewsletter] Ninth International Mars Society a
> Convention a Great Success
> From: "marssoc" <marssocinfo@...>
> Date: Tue, August 08, 2006 12:24 am
> To: marssocietynewsletter@yahoogroups.com
>
>
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> Ninth International Mars Society a Convention a Great Success
> August 7, 2006
> For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
> www.marssociety.org
>
> The Ninth International Mars Society Convention, held in Washington
> DC August 3-6, 2006 was a great success. Over 400 people attended.
> Speakers included NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, NASA Associate
> Administrator for Exploration Scott Horowitz, NASA Associate
> Administrator for Legislative Affairs Brian Chase, SpaceX CEO Elon
> Musk, Space Telescope Science Institute Director Matt Mountain,
> former NASA Mars Exploration program Director Scott Hubbard, Mars
> Society President Robert Zubrin, Australian Astronaut Andy Thomas,
> leading exobiologists Chris McKay and Penelope Boston, NSS Executive
> Director George Whitesides, Space Adventures Vice President Chris
> Faranetta, and over a hundred others.
>
> The conference was keynoted on the morning of Thursday August 3rd by
> Mike Griffin, who explained his plan to create a program that would
> enable human Mars exploration expeditions before the end of the
> 2020's. He was then followed by Elon Musk, who presented his plans
> for the privately funded creation of a line of launch vehicles that
> could make space travel cheap enough to allow the actual settlement
> of Mars. Brian Chase followed, explaining the parameters of the
> political battle faced by the Vision for Space Exploration,
> emphasizing the need to keep the grass roots coalition supporting the
> Moon-Mars initiative united and active.
>
> Over a hundred Mars Society members then left the conference for
> Capitol Hill to spend the afternoon meeting with Congressmen and
> congressional and Senatorial staff.
> Traveling from office to office in twenty groups of
> about 5 people each, the Mars Society members held over 100 half-hour
> meetings, underscoring the need for the Congress to support the Moon-
> Mars initiative, and, in fact, to accelerate it; to keep it a Moon-
> Mars program and not allow it to decay into a Moon-only program; and
> to insure funding and full support for a Shuttle mission to save the
> Hubble Space Telescope. The overwhelming response to the visits was
> positive. Particularly noteworthy was the response of a key aide to
> likely Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hilary Clinton, who
> assured the Mars Society activists that she was "fully onboard" with
> our program.
>
> Returning to the conference exhilarated, the activists rejoined other
> conference attendees to attend a reception and then kick back for the
> evening watching a presentation about Mars in the movies, and then
> previewing the great documentary film "The Mars Underground," by
> Scott Gill. This movie, which has already aired in Europe and
> Australia to rave reviews, is the first to convey the passion and the
> vision behind the effort to get humans to Mars. It will be out in the
> USA this December in DVD, and may air on TV at about that time. Stay
> tuned.
>
> The Friday morning plenary session was led off by Scott Horowitz,
> followed by Matt Mountain and Scott Hubbard. Horowitz laid out in
> greater technical detail NASA's plan for the Moon-Mars program, and
> thanked the Mars Society for the work it was doing in support of the
> vision. Mountain's presentation made clear the enormous value of
> Hubble for science, and the importance of the fight to save it. This
> was underscored in comments made by Mars Society president Robert
> Zubrin. "The Hubble is the most productive scientific instrument in
> human history, and by far the most important accomplishment of the
> NASA manned spaceflight program in the past 30 years. So what is
> involved in the decision to save Hubble is the integrity of the space
> agency. Is NASA really interested in advancing science, or are its
> claims to that effect just so much baloney that they say in order to
> get funds to distribute to aerospace contractors? Do we have a
> purpose driven space program, or don't we?" Mountain agreed, and
> thanked the Mars Society for its fierce defense of this treasure of
> human civilization.
>
> After the morning session, the conference divided into five parallel
> tracks, to allow the maximum number of attendees the opportunity to
> present papers on every aspect of Mars exploration and settlement.
> (The full agenda and list of papers is posted at the Mars society
> website at www.marssociety.org.) The evening session was then devoted
> to a stirring panel discussion about the need to accept risk in human
> space exploration.
>
> The Saturday morning session was led off by Zubrin, who laid out how
> far the Mars Society had come since its founding in 1998, when its
> ideas were ruled out completely by those in power, and the
> possibility of their ever being accepted was discounted by the gaggle
> of cynics and self-proclaimed experts who hang about the periphery of
> the space program. In eight years, our ideas have gone from Quixotic
> to mainstream, and now the task is to make sure they are implemented,
> and not stopped either by those who oppose the Vision altogether, or
> those charlatans who are currently peddling fraudulent promises of
> cheap electricity beamed from Lunar solar power stations in order to
> lure the public into accepting an initiative degraded to a Moon-only
> objective.
>
> "They have a fundamentally base understanding of human nature,"
> Zubrin said. "They use deceit, and appeal to greed. They try to tempt
> people to support space with a false promise of saving them some
> money at the pump. We say we need to go to Mars because it is the
> planet that has the resources to support the birth of a new branch of
> human civilization, because that is what this is really about –
> creating an open human future where people will have the freedom to
> be the makers of their worlds, not just the inhabitants of a world
> already made, and growing ever narrower and more regulated as it
> seeks to constrain human aspirations to accept ever tighter limits.
> In the battle of ideas we will beat theirs, because ours are based on
> truth. We will win by building a movement based on Hope rather than
> Greed."
>
> Zubrin was followed by Australian Astronaut Andy Thomas, a veteran of
> a five-month mission to the Russian Space Station Mir, a Columbia and
> an ISS mission, and most recently, STS 114, the summer 2005 mission
> commanded by Eileen Collins which returned the Shuttle to flight.
> Thanking the Mars Society for everything it is doing, Thomas
> presented Zubrin with a Mars Society flag that the STS 114 crew had
> brought to orbit with them on their historic mission. The morning
> session was then rounded out by exobiologist Chris McKay, who laid
> out the key issues involved in the search for life in the universe.
>
> During the afternoon, dozens of additional presentations were made in
> the parallel track sessions, and the Mars Society Steering Committee
> also met. Most of the discussion at the Steering Committee meeting
> revolved around plans for the four-month Mars mission simulation crew
> expedition to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on
> Devon Island. For four months, May-August 2007, this crew of seven
> people will engage in sustained program of active field exploration
> 900 miles from the North pole, while operating in the same mode and
> under the same constraints that an actual human expedition would need
> to face on Mars. Nothing like this has ever been done. By doing it we
> will learn a great deal about how to explore on Mars, while inspiring
> missions of people around the world with the tangible vision of human
> exploration of Mars.
>
> It was decided that in order to insure the best chance for success of
> the mission, an engineering team would be sent to FMARS in advance,
> to inspect and upgrade the facility and make sure no damage had been
> done to it by natural or human causes in the interim since it was
> last used in the summer of 2005. A robust telescience team to back up
> the mission will also be created. The formal call for crew volunteers
> will go out soon, with the goal of selecting the crew commander by
> the end of October, and the full crew by the end of November. In
> order to assure the widest possible field of candidates from which to
> select a crack crew, the Mars Society will pay crew transportation
> expenses to the Arctic. After selection, the crew will perform a two-
> week practice mission at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah in
> February.
>
> Other decisions made at the Steering Committee included a go-ahead to
> initiate an intercollegiate Mars rover competition. The contest will
> differ from the several other rover/robot competitions that have been
> held by others in that it will not only be concerned with the rover
> mobility system. Instead, in this contest, the rovers, equipped with
> cameras and remotely commanded, will be made to run through a stretch
> of desert terrain with interesting and complex geology, and the
> operating teams will attempt to make and correctly interpret as many
> discoveries about the geology of the site as they can. The team that
> makes the most correctly-interpreted discoveries will win. The
> contest will thus be interdisciplinary, just as actual Mars missions
> are, requiring participation both by engineers and natural
> scientists. The complete rules for the contest will be published
> shortly.
>
> Another initiative that will be taken will be a worldwide 5k race to
> raise money for the Mars Society's exploration projects. Details will
> follow soon.
>
> Saturday night the Mars Society held its annual banquet, with
> entertainment provided by Mars musicians Bob McNally and Bebe
> Serrato. After the entertainment, Zubrin gave a brief talk laying out
> the plan for the 4-month FMARS 2007 expedition, calling upon those
> present to make it possible by funding it. Over $50,000 was raised.
>
> On Sunday, the morning plenaries were led off by George Whitesides
> and Penelope Boston, who gave a fascinating talk about the need for
> joint human/robot exploration. The final plenary was given by Chris
> Faranetta, of Space Adventures, whose company is pulling together a
> Russian-made hardware set involving the Soyuz capsule and the Proton
> launcher to allow paying tourists to go on circum Lunar orbital
> voyages starting in 2009.
> After further parallel track talks, the conference closed at 3 PM.
>
> All of the conference talks were videotaped, and will soon be
> available for purchase on DVDs. Ordering information will follow
> soon. In addition, papers written by presenters are being collected,
> and will eventually be published in book form.
>
> In sum, it was a terrific conference.
>
> For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
> www.marssociety.org.
>
>