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LUNCH WITH SEAN: Yesterday (9/5/02), Craig Dooley and I attended the Armed Forces Appreciation Luncheon, held by the New Orleans Regional Chamber of Commerce. The keynote speaker was New Orleans native Sean O’Keefe, Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Mr. O’Keefe was on hand to present several awards to local active and reserve military personnel in honor of their outstanding community service efforts. As such, his comments highlighted the Agency’s benefits to national security and homeland defense.
According to Mr. O’Keefe, the September 11 attacks changed the context of the NASA/national security relationship. NASA was chartered as a civilian agency, but now he sees it working “closely in collaboration with the homeland security agenda”. NASA is looking into technology which could “preclude” terrorists from gaining control of commercial aircraft, and there is a new awareness of the utility of NASA’s earth science assets for national security observation. The Agency is considering how NASA-developed technology can be applied to national security uses.
On the topic of space exploration, Mr. O’Keefe pointed out that the 196 day endurance record (for American astronauts) recently set by the Expedition 5 NASA crewmembers is still far short of the time required to get most anywhere else in the solar system, and one primary focus of the Agency today is to develop technologies to enable longer-term missions. “We are today in the ‘age of sail’ in space exploration”, he said, and asserted that NASA was working to bring us to the (metaphorical) ‘age of steam’ to enable more ambitious manned missions.
Mr. O’Keefe praised the University of New Orleans and the Michoud Assembly Facility for their science and engineering contributions to space exploration over the years.
After the luncheon and with some significant prodding, we approached Mr. O’Keefe and spoke with him for a moment, putting in a plug for the Mars Society’s “One Percent Initiative”. Mr. O’Keefe responded by pointing out that NASA currently spends 4-5% of its budget on power generation research and %5 on “endurance” R&D for support of long-duration manned missions (presumably meaning Mars). I thought these numbers were a bit high (though in fairness they were off-the-cuff and not really intended as firm stats), so I checked them against NASA’s 2002 budget. Using the numbers on page AS-16 of the Agency Summary, and combining all the technology development, space science, and space biology items I come up with 7.56% — which is a generous amount, considering I had insufficient information to split out unrelated aeronautics items, etc. (if any readers can give me a better handle on the budget items, I’d appreciate the input).
The point, he said, was to “get out of the same loop” (not sure what, specifically, he meant by that — but I can guess a number of possibilities), and to improve human endurance in space so that we could start doing interesting things again. At the end of our brief conversation, he coyly suggested that we watch for “big changes” coming in the December/January timeframe (interesting timing — as noted here last month, the final report from the Presidential Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry is due November 19).
TODAY’S THEMIS IMAGE: Fluidized crater ejecta.
The ejecta blanket of this crater does not resemble the blocky, discontinuous ejecta associated with most fresh craters on Mars. Rather, the continuous lobes of material seen around this crater are evidence that the crater ejecta were fluidized upon impact of the meteor that formed this crater. Impact ejecta become fluidized when a meteor strikes a surface that has a considerable volatile content. The volatiles mixed with the ejecta form a flow of material that moves outward from the crater and produces the morphology seen in this THEMIS visible image.
Both of these images are pretty visually appealing.
YESTERDAY’S THEMIS IMAGE: (sorry, it wasn’t there when I was blogging yesterday afternoon): Terby Crater.
Perched on the northern rim of the enormous Hellas Basin, Terby Crater is host to an impressive range of landforms. As is common for many Martian craters, Terby has been filled with layered material, presumably sediments. The process of erosion has exposed some of these layers along with strange, rectilinear ridges. Sinous channels, collapse pits, and a scoured-looking caprock are some of the other interesting landforms in Terby. Such a variety of landforms attests to a diversity of rock types and geologic processes in the relatively small area of this THEMIS image.
MOON TV: TransOrbital has won approval from the FedGov for the first commercial flight to the Moon. It is to take place in 9-12 months, using their “TrailBlazer” orbiter bus lofted on a Russian launcher.
Judging from their site, they are taking an entertainment-first, science-second business approach. The primary products are to be imagery, in the form of still pictures, video, and a high-resolution lunar surface atlas, and carry-along secondary payloads (a time-capsule and personal mementos). Several missions are in the works, with plans for lunar landers and rovers to follow the initial orbital mission(s).
Looks promising. Hopefully they can pull it off. On the one hand, I can see the initial missions at least getting a lot of public attention, in the same way that Pathfinder created such a stir of interest several years ago. And building up in steps is good showmanship: each successive mission brings something new and more ambitious than before, maintaining that public interest (and thus the returns from advertising, sales, tie-ins, etc.). On the other hand, I see the public interest side as being of limited duration. They might be able to sustain interest with visits to special attractions like Tycho or any of the various landers, LEM bases, or even crashed ascent stages and S-IVbs (which obviously have never been seen). But even with clever showmanship, the public will become bored of the product eventually.
Of course, by then, well…maybe they’ll be able to send their probes to Mars and start the cycle all over again…
(link via Mark Whittington)
TODAY’S THEMIS IMAGE: The Viking 2 landing site.
LOOKING FOR MORE VOLUNTEERS: Patt Czarnik, MS Director of Membership, is looking for volunteers to staff the MS booth at the upcoming World Space Congress in Houston:
Hello All,
This information previously went out in a MS Newsletter Digest but not everyone receives them and this email contains further details. Therefore please forward this email to all members in your chapter.
Volunteers Still Needed for World Space Congress
The International Mars Society will have a booth in the Exhibit Hall of the World Space Congress 2002 in Houston, Texas. We need volunteers to speak with WSC attendees about our many projects, our goals as a society, and to recruit new members and potential corporate sponsors. Volunteers will have free access to the Exhibit Hall; housing is available as low as $25/night (see below). Our Exhibit Hall booth will need to be staffed from October 14-19.
The World Space Congress is a once in a decade opportunity for the International Mars Society. Described as “The Most Significant Space Event of the Decade”, the World Space Congress is a gathering of approximately 13,000 “scientific, technical, business and government leaders, representing every facet of the international space community”. This is an unprecedented opportunity for the International Mars Society and its membership.
Following is schedule of dates and times volunteers are needed:
1) We must submit all names of individuals who will be staffing our booth to the WSC by September 9th. We are limited to 10 names.
2) The booth set-up times are as follows (we do not know what time has been assigned to us yet).
Thu 10 Oct 8:00am – 6:00pm
Fri 11 Oct 8:00am – 6:00pm
Sat 12 Oct 8:00am – 6:00pm
Sun 13 Oct 8:00am – 4:00pm
The booth must be complete by 4:00pm on Sunday!
3) Booth operating hours will be as follows (the booth must be staffed at all times when the exhibit hall is open. If found unattended, the exhibitor will be asked to vacate and may be prohibited from exhibiting at future
events) {this indicates the latest changes emailed to me by AIAA}
Mon 14 Oct 11:15am – 7:30pm
Tue 15 Oct 10:00am – 5:30pm
Wed 16 Oct 10:00am – 5:30pm
Thu 17 Oct 10:00am – 7:30pm
Fri 18 Oct 10:00am – 8:00pm (Public Day)
Sat 19 Oct 10:00am – 6:00pm (Public Day)
Note that there are three receptions scheduled in the exhibit hall.
Exhibits must be open during these times:
Mon 14 Oct 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Thu 17 Oct 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Fri 18 Oct 6:00pm – 8:00pm
4) Booth move-out can begin Saturday 19 October at 6:00pm and we need volunteers to help with move out.
5) Volunteers are responsible for their own expenses. I have looked into an extended stay hotel (Bradford Home Suites, about 10 mins from Exhibit Hall). It is a 1 bedroom (king bed) suite with a sofa sleeper in living room and full kitchen. 3 people could comfortably share it. Cost is around $500/week or $167/person; $25/day with 3 sharing costs (if staying less than full week). If anyone is interested in sharing suite, let me know. I also will be driving to Houston so will have a car and will be available to transport volunteers to and from Exhibit Hall.
This is a great opportunity to meet and get to know MS members from around the country and to share our vision with thousands of people from around the world.
If you are available, please contact Patt Czarnik at pattczarnik@hotmail.com NO LATER THAN September 7; indicate the dates/times that you are available and if interested in sharing a suite.
For more information on the World Space Congress, you may visit their web site: http://www.aiaa.org/WSC2002/
Patt Czarnik
Director of Membership
LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS: The Mars Society is requesting applications from those interested in participating in the upcoming field seasons at the MDRS and FMARS.
Application deadline for October missions to MDRS is September 14. Deadline for other missions is September 30.
TODAY’S THEMIS IMAGE: Streamlined island in Kasei Vallis:
Except for the loss of its ring of ejecta, the crater at the leading edge of a streamlined island in Kasei Vallis shows no hint of the catastrophic floods that passed by it. Kasei Vallis is one of several major outflow channel systems that were active over 3 billion years ago. The intense floods scoured the landscape, eroding craters and producing streamlined islands. But in a close-up view, the evidence for these floods is not apparent. This is true of the most similar terrestrial example, the channeled scablands of eastern Washington which also were formed by a catastrophic flood.
TODAY’S THEMIS IMAGE: A grooved channel in the Tharsis region…with yardangs!
The Tharsis Montes region on Mars is a major center of volcanic and tectonic activity. The channel in this image is west of the relatively small volcano called Biblis Patera although it shows no obvious relationship to that volcano. Instead, it may be related to the more distant, but more massive volcano Olympus Mons to the north. The channel may have hosted flowing lava at one time but now contains a material that has eroded into an impressive ridge-and-groove pattern. These features may be yardangs, landforms produced from the erosion by wind of sedimentary material.
I like this image. It’s one of the few so far that I have been able to understand visually (the shadows and other depth cues often look ambiguous to me, making it hard to tell what is high and what is low.)
STINKY STINKY MARSLIFE: Scientists have grown methanogen extremophiles in a Mars-like lab environment, demonstrating that certain kinds of life might/could exist on Mars (might exist there indigenously, or could be introduced successfully as terraformers).
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