Guest: Lucinda Land. Topics: The Mars Society Conference, Mars Society educational outreach. We welcomed Lucinda Land, Acting Executive Director of the Mars Society to tell us about the upcoming Thirteenth Annual International Mars Society Convention to be held in Dayton, Ohio from August 5-8, 2010. You can learn more by visiting the conference website at www.marssociety.org/portal/c/Conventions/2010-annual-convention. During the first segment of the program, Lucinda took us through the conference schedule, plan, keynote speakers, and special events such as the Mars Camp. You can follow along with her by checking out the information on their website. We also talked about registration, hotels and special tours such as the US Air Force Museum located at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton. As we moved into the second segment, we led off with a call from listener Rick regarding the US space policy still being debated and the passage of the Senate authorization bill last week. Rick wanted to know if there would be any Mars Society Conference programming on the subject and Lucinda said yes and highlighted just some of the items on the schedule dealing with policy. Later in this segment, Lucinda was asked about Mars and space advocacy in Scotland. Lucinda told us that it was active, also in the UK, Italy where the Mars Society held their international conference last year and also Poland which is where their international conference will be later this year. She mentioned that one of the Glasgow universities was just starting a space studies program and that the University of Glasgow had an aeronautical space program. She talked about scientific innovation and leadership in Scotland. When asked if Nessie could have come from Mars, she said Nessie was a tourist trap. As we started the third segment of the show, Lucinda put out a call for volunteers to help in developing their new website. We also talked about Mars Society programs such as the University Rover program, MDRS and FMARS. As we approached the end of the program we talked about her teaching 8th grade science students at her school in San Jose, CA. Lucinda told how the middle school students are inspired but a listener asked her how to inspire adults. This led to a comprehensive discussion about methods of outreach to adults in the general population. Several ideas were suggested by both Lucinda and myself. As the show was about to come to an end, Lucinda received questions about Mars gravity and humans going to Mars. This discussion extended the program to two full hours as we talked about gravity, I referenced The Space Show Classroom Lesson 12 with comments made by Dr. Jim Logan, and Lucinda fielded gravity questions including one on how best to do experiments to see about humans reproducing in Martian gravity. As you will hear, Lucinda did not have any ideas on how to carry out the reproduction experiments. If you have questions about The Mars Society, joining it, starting a chapter in your area, the upcoming Dayton, Ohio conference or today's Space Show with Lucinda Land, send them to her at lucinda@marssociety.org. Make sure you mention The Space Show in your subject line.
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