Icarus Intersellar will host Starship Congress in Dallas, TX from August 15-18, 2013.
This is not an official event of Dallas Mars Society because a) it is outside the scope of The Mars Society, and b) the schedule coincides with The 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention held in Boulder, CO.
However, some members of DMS who are unable to attend Mars13 may wish to get together and attend Starship Congress. Please watch the newsgroup or attend one of the meetings.
All,
Yes, another month has gone by, and our next monthly meeting is coming up. We will meet at the Spaghetti Warehouse at 6:30pm in Plano this coming Sunday, May 26 – same as usual!
We have a number of activities and news to discuss;
In national news, both Opportunity and Curiosity safely made it past conjunction and regained contact. Opportunity, deep into its 10th year on Mars, has logged over 22 miles, surpassing the 40 year old distance record of Apollo 17 (which they did it in three days, but…). (The lunakhod 2 lunar rover still holds the extra-terrestial record of 23 miles)
And, closer to home and nearer to Mars, the Explore Mars ‘Humans 2 Mars’ summit held May 6-8 had a variety of major space figures openly calling for NASA’s main manned space priority to be a manned mission to touch down on Mars within 20 years. This is the first time that a time-bound manned mission to Mars was discussed as NASA’s next main goal so openly by such senior government policymakers. We are getting closer all the time to national policy finally coming around to where it belongs: mankind’s next step is Mars!
See you Sunday!
Kurt
One of the most hotly debated topics related to sending humans to Mars is the health effects of prolonged exposure to microgravity and how these might be mitigated.
Prolonged exposure to microgravity (a.k.a. “zero gravity”) has several serious effects on the human body:
All:
There will be are usual monthly meeting this Sunday at the Spaghetti Warehouse at 6:30pm, Sunday, April 28th, – same place, same time (off the 15th street exit from rt 75 in plano)
Things are heating up for our chapter and for Mars. Orbital Sciences joined the commercial space world with a successful launch this Saturday of their ISS supply spacecraft from Wallops Island, VA. Orbital is a company similar in size to SpaceX, but from a more traditional aerospace contractor mold. This is a reminder that the heart of commercial business is competition! Now is an exciting time for space as it broadens in the number of players and drops in cost, which in turn will be an enabler for future space exploration.
NASA is floating their next ‘manned deep space mission that isn’t a direct mission to mars’ idea, an asteroid roundup. One day, they’ll run out of ideas and finally give up and admit Mars is the only logical next objective for human deep space flight. One day.
In local news, we are gearing up for the national convention, Moon Day, the URC, and other activities. We can discuss more about our T-shirt design, and hear more about our local activities.
See you Sunday!
Kurt
Mars Society Announcement
April 10, 2013
Robert Zubrin to Debate ‘Zero Growth’ Ideologue Phil Cafaro on April 15th
“The subject of the debate has everything to do with Mars exploration. ‘Zero Growth’ ideology is antithetical to human expansion into space, and opening the space frontier is completely subversive to Malthusian and related limited resources ideology.” — Dr. Robert Zubrin
Mars Society president and aerospace engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin will debate Dr. Phil Cafaro, a professor of Philosophy at Colorado Christian University (CCU) and president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics, who says that we need to stop immigration and impose population control in order to stop global warming. CCU will host the event on Monday, April 15th at 7:00 p.m. in Lakewood, Colorado.
The planned debate, entitled “Are People the Problem?”, was occasioned by an article that Dr. Cafaro wrote in the Denver Post, arguing that immigration contributes to global warming, because by coming to America, immigrants increase their incomes, and thus their carbon footprints. This, says Dr. Cafaro, must be stopped.
Dr. Zubrin then published a rebuttal of this argument in National Review.
Dr. Cafaro’s ideas going beyond immigration are even more remarkable. In his anthology “Life on the Brink” (introduction by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, edited by Dr. Cafaro and Eileen Crist) he states that it is not only necessary to cut off immigration to America, but that the U.S. population needs to be reduced to 100 million people. According to Dr. Cafaro, “The last thing the world needs is hundreds of millions of more Americans.”
In addition, Dr. Cafaro requires that the world population be cut down from its current 7 billion to 2 billion, and recommends using the denial of U.S. foreign aid as a method to coerce Third World countries to accept population reduction. In addition, argues Dr. Cafaro in his included essay entitled “Is humanity a cancer upon the Earth?”, economic growth must be ended.
In the same book, contributing author David Foreman, the founder of Earth First and fellow leader of the “Apply the Brakes” anti-growth organization, objects to feminist interference in the family planning movement on the grounds that some feminists have the temerity to insist that a woman’s right to choose also includes the right to choose to have children. He says they have no such right.
This is going to be a significant debate. Dr. Cafaro’s views bring sharply into focus the anti-human and totalitarian implications of the ‘Zero Growth’ movement. In opposing him, Dr. Zubrin will make the case for human creativity and freedom.
Admission to the debate is free, but advance registration is required. Those wishing to attend may register online.
The Mars Society
Media & Public RelationsLakewood, CO
I was looking at the DMS web site and couldn’t help but notice that the links I’ve been tweeting are now continually scrolling down the right margin of the site. The links in the tweets are clickable, so it gives visitors to the site instant access to those Mars related
articles, videos/photos I’ve come across in the steam.
Check it out, if you want to keep current (I usually hit the news stream at least once a day, if not more:)
Thanks Greg. I’ll certainly hit 10,000 tweets/re-tweets (mostly about Mars) before July 4th.
Mark
[You're welcome, and thanks for all the Tweets. -Greg]
All:
We will have our March monthly meeting this coming Sunday, March 31st, at 6:30pm at the spaghetti warehouse at 15th street and rt 75 in Plano, Tx. Yes, i know this is Easter Sunday, and i hope that this doesn’t cause any interference.
We have many projects going, and we’ll get an update on:
> a re-cap of the Dallas Science Fair, since many of you were not able to make last month’s meeting when we went over our experience as judges
> planning for the URC
> planning for the convention
-news on the poster competition
-discussion of our T-shirt design and sales.
> Moon day planning
> convention papers
> Zooniverse Mars wind data extraction
> latest Mars news regarding Curiosity, as well as other probes, and the latest news in the Space community.
See you Sunday!
Kurt
From the “wouldn’t that be something” category.
http://news.discovery.com/space/why-mars-getting-hit-by-a-comet-would-be-awesome-13032.htm
All:
Yes, time has gotten away from me, and i am behind two monthly meeting reports. So here are the quick summaries:
January:
Eight folks came to our first meeting in 2013, and it turned out to be a crowded night, with us landing on a ‘buy one get one free’ night, so we had to wait and squeeze in (in contrast to our February meeting!).
>I went over my annual presentation to the SMU gifted students boy’s conference – an enthusiastic crowd, as usual. Yes, young kids are still excited by space! (The SMU gifted students conference was early this year…usually it is in May but this year it was in January for the boys….
>Tom went over the plans for judging at the Dallas Science Fair. (More on that in a bit)
>We discussed the plans for getting additional copies of InDesign to help out with the conference paper editing task. I have a copy purchased by National, but this is more than a one person job, and The Mars Society is only allowed one copy, so we are still working on getting additional copies.
>And we discussed the latest goings on on Mars, Curiosity, and Space news in general.
February:
Due to a coincidence of personal business, illnesses, and just bad timing, we had a smaller crowd than usual this month And, wouldn’t you know it, this was the month that the Spaghetti warehouse was nearly empty, and we GOT THE BACK ROOM! Yes, we haven’t gotten the big party room to ourselves in over a year. So we enjoyed the extra elbow room and the chance to have some privacy.
>We went over the results of the Dallas Science fair, URC planning, convention planning and posters, as well as updates on the latest from Mars.
The Dallas Science Fair:
>Three of our local members got to be judges at the Dallas Science Fair. Top high school science students presented projects on different areas – many, many different areas. Anyone who thinks that today’s kids do not have science smarts or are not interested in math and science anymore needs to come to this fair – there over a thousand high school kids, and nearly a thousand projects, many at a level of sophistication that i would be impressed to see from college students or even working adults. There was a mind boggling array of ideas and projects, and it was truly uplifting to see so much energy and sophistication in our young people.
True, there were few truly space specific projects, but there were many closely related, and we gave our Curiosity Award to a young man who had done research into small, portable hydroponic gardening, as we felt that was very germane to space colony food growth. Our honorable mention runner up was another young man doing work on novel drug therapies for protecting the body from the effects of ionizing radiation. Judging this was a great experience, and a definite ‘let’s do this again next year!’. May thanks to Tom for setting this all up.
We also have some other group projects, with us signed up for our next round at Moon Day, and Tom has some great ideas for improving our Rover activity from last year. Our group is also helping with the University Rover Competition (URC) (two of us are signed up to volunteer in late May / Early June), and the Mars Society Convention.
Despite the travel restrictions imposed on the government due to all the budget troubles in the news, a truly great line-up of speakers is taking shape for the next national convention in Boulder later this summer, and there are of course a year’s worth of history making science from Curiosity to catch up on.
Our next meeting is coming up next week, and I’ll send out a meeting notice shortly,
Kurt
| All:
This is a quick month, and it is time again! We will meet at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Plano, off of rt 75 at 15th street, at 6:30 pm on Sunday, Feb 24. There are a number of activities going on, in our Chapter, National, and at NASA: >the regional Science fair, and the first ever Dallas Chapter prizes being awarded on Feb 23. We will have details! >The preparations for URC are getting into gear, with a record 15 teams registering this year (gulp!!) >I’ve downloaded the Adobe InDesign software package, and we are gearing up to start work on the paper editing. >The call for papers went out from National for the annual convention, to be held at Boulder this year in mid August. >the poster contest from national >progress and activity on the Zooniverse ‘Planet Four’ wind streak mapping project. I’ve done a few dozen photos – it is neat to be looking at actual pictures of Mars and to be working on an actual Mars Science project. >Curiosity went drilling, and NASA has agreed on a 2020 rover, mission TBD. Meanwhile, in Washington…… See you there this Sunday!! Kur__,_._,___ |