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Baby, I’m a Star

The Kenner Star Party was a success…people were lined up for three blocks at one point, and the museum folks had to post someone at the end of the line to turn away anyone else who showed up. Far better attendance than I would have expected.

LAMS President Craig Dooley and I set up a table near the exit, with several new display items. The table paraphernalia looked better than ever, but there is still room for improvement (more on this to come). We had a lot of folks who were mildly curious and a few who were really interested. Craig and I also made several contacts with other space organizations, which may get us more exposure in the future.

The highlight of the evening was being asked by the local CBS affiliate to appear on camera live, and give a short plug for the Mars Society. I saw the spot later on, when the news repeated, and boy, did it look completely different from the other side. I was on for about thirty seconds, all but about five of which was voice-over. It seemed more like five minutes, and that I rambled so much that the reporter had to cut me off, but in reality it was quick, to the point, and I didn’t do anything to make a fool of myself (or don’t think that I did, anyway).

All in all, a good experience.

Happy Mars Day!!

I’m off to the Kenner Star Party (which is at 7:30 — I seemed to have forgotten to mention that earlier) to run the LAMS booth, so I’ll post more later on.

For now, Phil at The Speculist has an interview with MS head honcho Bob Zubrin: The Case for Mars Revisited.

I really need to add Phil to the blogroll…

Giving Good Presentations II

On second thought, maybe my recommendations for giving good presentations weren’t so good.

CAIB Report

As you probably already know (this being posted late in the day) the CAIB report has been released.

Should make for some interesting reading…when I actually have the time to read it. Meanwhile, Rand Simberg, who is far more capable of this than I, will be posting commentary on it as he reads.

Update: I know this is a trivial observation, but in flipping through the introduction, I’m impressed with the quality of photographs chosen from STS-107. Some, including the final liftoff, the Sinai, and the Moon on Earth’s limb, are stunning.

Rocket Science: Pintle Injection

Don’t like your old showerhead injector? Tired of combustion instability? Looking for a way to deep throttle on ascent (wink wink, nudge nudge)? Try pintle injection!

[Thanks to Dominic Pledger for inspiring this topic]

Mars Opposition Star Party in Kenner

The Kenner Daily Living Science Center will be hosting a star party this week, in honor of the Mars opposition.

The Pontchartrain Astronomy Society will be sponsoring a Mars program, and there should be plenty of scopes for checking out our red neighbor.

[Thanks to Rich Wright for the tip.]

A Letter

Here’s a letter I’ve just sent off of the local New Orleans rag and my hometown paper.

Continue reading A Letter

When Worlds Don’t Collide

Just in case, you know, any of you were worried about it: Mars Will Not Kill You.

Call for Input

In honor of next week’s Great Opposition, Phil at The Speculist will be focusing on Mars all week. To this end, he is inviting submissions on topics relating to Mars exploration:

Here’s what we we’re looking for:

  • Links to interesting Mars-related websites, news stories, products, pictures.
  • One-liner tips about how to make the best of Red Planet Madness, etc.
  • Write a mini-essay (50 words or less) on Mars, space, rockets, that kind of thing.
  • Any and everything else you’d like to do. Surprise me!

Send your submissions to me before noon, Mountain time on Tuesday.

Hop to it!

Q&A With William Hartmann

I still haven’t gotten to my copy of A Traveler’s Guide to Mars, but as noted previously it looks like a great book from what I have seen flipping through it.

Space.com has an interview with the author here.