The 2nd annual Mars Society convention was held Aug 12-15 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This is about a one hour drive from where I live, so I attended again, just like last year. This page is a commentary on the convention - you may also want to check out the official coverage on the Mars Society website. The purpose of the Mars Society is to promote and send a manned mission to Mars.

At right is a shot of an unidentified (by me) speaker, addressing the crowd. This picture shows maybe half of the attendees. See below for more pictures!

IMHO, here's the top three ideas from the convention:

#1) Robert Forward / Space Tethers. This, of course, is hardly specific to the Mars Society, and it's not really a new idea, he's been developing it for years now. But at the convention, I had the chance to hear an hour-long presentation from Dr. Forward, speak with him personally for a few minutes, and read a couple of technical papers he distributed at the convention. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why we would do it any other way!

The basic idea is that we have a mass dipole in orbit about Earth - sort of like a barbell with weights on one side only, tumbling in orbit around the Earth. We launch a payload, the tether grabs it in LEO, and is able to throw it out of the Earth's gravitational field a half-rotation later. It could throw it to another tether orbiting the Moon, or even one orbiting Mars. The Earth tether loses energy as a result of throwing the payload, but it is able to restore the lost energy in one of two rocket-less techniques: Either it "pumps" the tether in and out, similar to a child swinging on a swing, or it pushes against the Earth's magnetic field by running a current thru a wire running along the tether, in the opposite direction to the current that would be induced by the wire moving through the magnetic field. . The power for the current is generated by solar panels. Of course, there's no such thing as free energy, we're taking it from the orbital kinetic energy of the Earth itself.

Here's the beauty of it: It is very scalable, incrementally deployable, and the Earth tether is even able to throw the Moon tether to the moon, or the Mars tether to Mars. Both tethers can arrive at their destinations without the need for retro-rockets - they can put themselves into orbit. Finally, the tethers are made of a material that exists today - we don't need to wait for graphite whiskers or any kind of "unobtainium" (as Forward calls it, great term), it exists today as a commercially available product (sold under 2 names, one is a fishing line and the other is a kite string, the papers give the actual names).

On the Moon, since there is no atmosphere, the tether is even capable of soft-landing a payload on the surface of the Moon, and picking it up later and returning it to Earth. (Yes, there are complications due to the fact that near-Moon orbits aren't terribly stable) Furthermore, we'll be able to practice throwing and catching with dummy payloads, proving the reliability of the system before we rely on it. There are two papers linked on the tether site above - check them out for many more technical details.

And, tethers are not just an idea that looks great on paper. There have been several sucessful tether experiments - there's even a tether up in orbit right now, a 4 km one that has been orbiting Earth for years.

#2) James Cameron / Mars movie: OK, call me star-struck, but when someone with the rep of James Cameron (who, although you can't really tell, is in the center of the pic below, giving his talk) says he's going to do a couple of Mars movies, due out in '01, I'm impressed. One will be an IMAX special, and the other will be a 5 hour TV miniseries, showing the first manned flight to Mars. It is great to see Cameron involved, one of his movies could really raise public interest. There's two additional movies due out in '00 that will be regular theater-style movies.

#3) Inflatable rover tires. So much of the navigation difficulties with small rovers is due to small tire size. Mr. X (who was he? I didn't record the name when I was watching the presentation, and I can't find it in the conference syllabus) made a sample rover with 9-foot diameter inflatable tires. It is able to easily roll over rocks one-third the tire size - which pretty much covers 99% of the planet. It cruises over terrain (talus field, etc.) that Sojurner would find impassible. Furthermore, the tires float, so a rover like this on (say) Titan would be able to navigate over potential lakes. It struck me as a great general-purpose rover solution.

The presenter played a short vid that showed the rover in action, ending with a hilarious shot of it rolling directly over a Sojurner model rover.

The Mars Society is the brain child of Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of The Case For Mars, whose sensible mission presentation galvanized interest in a manned trip (and I strongly recommend the book, if you haven't read it). Here he is (small figure in front of the white screen) addressing the convention.

A small vendor display accompanied the convention. For some silly reason, I left out the 2 largest vendors, who are out of this shot to the right. At bottom center is a model of the first Martian landing sight. Bushnell Telescopes were there (middle of left row), they had an 8" dob that was interesting. A bit sticky in altitude and azimuth, but it was definitely free from balance problems. Last year Bushnell was here with a 90mm refractor that didn't show up this year.

That's it! Check out some of the links above for more info. See you at the '00 convention.