April 2012 Meeting Minutes

A few weeks late, but here are the meeting minutes for April, 2012:

We had productive and lively meeting, with 9 people attending.

Tom gave a brief on the results of the debate team’s trip to the final’s in New York. Tom’s wife Donna has been coached a local home schooled debate team regarding the role of manned space exploration. Our group has been helping along as we have seem these bright high school students rise up to the final 8 teams in the world and go to the finals in New York, an incredible achievement. Unfortunately, in New York they lost in the first round – luck must not have been with them this time. But we applaud how far they have got, and we all enjoyed the ride!

We also had a discussion of the Mars Society related materials owned by our late member, Roger Carr. It is Mimi’s wish to bequeath it to our Chapter: We discussed the legal aspects of this. Dan went over the material- ‘The Case for Mars’ books, convention T-shirts etc, and a Mars globe that will look great on our Moon Day table.

Tom showed us the banner and stand he had made using the design the Mark created. It is a stunning visual display, and will definitely give our table at Moon Day, the convention, or any other event (like our monthly meetings!) a distinctly professional and compelling appearance. As per the group’s approval, we reimbursed Tom for $100 towards the cost of the banner, and Tom picked up the rest of the cost (Thank you Tom!).

I talked about his annual talk at the SMU gifted boys program where he talked about Mars and Mars direct. The talk is always popular, and I had over 60 students attend in the afternoon session.

I also admitted that given my workload I will simply not be able give the time that it deserves to the book project of publishing all the past papers. I handed the CD’s over to Dan – Dan and Kris will work on organizing them now. Progress is slow but is still happening!

Plans were made for Tom and Mark to find a rover for Moon Day – according to the San Diego Chapter rovers are real attention getters both from the public and the media. Progress on that is promising and ongoing!

Kris and I confirmed that we will go out to MDRS to help with the University Rover Competition (it is now less than two weeks away!). This will the first time out to MDRS for the both of us.

Mark also took on working up a T-shirt design – the convention is coming, and a MSL themed T-shirt is sure to sell well this year.

Both Moon Day (July 21) and the Mars Society Convention (August 3 – 5) are coming up and registration for the convention is open!

till our next meeting on May 27!

Kurt

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