You don't get conventions? Not surprised at all, as you don't get so many things. Conventions are for meeting people, exchanging ideas and presenting papers not changing the world..but having fun with new and old friends. Eugene is a freindly place with nice people and the Willamette River about a block away form the hotel with Spinner Butte over looking it and the town...

EP wrote: I guess this as good a place as any to mention this -

Mars is not Earth-like, it is Mars-like, dammit.

Chris writes: Swearing doesn't make something truth. Mars is for sure different from the Earth in many ways. But, it is also the same in many ways. They both obeys the same physical laws and are made of similar materials. There are many analog environment here on Earth to places on Mars.

EP wrote: In 1964, before Mariner IV, there were no less than 3 serious engineering teams working on manned Mars flight using the Saturn 1 and Saturn 5 rockets, which were then in production.

Chris writes: Nonsense there were many plans just as serious made after Mariner 4 showed a Mars that appeared to be more moon like that thought before. BTW, in 1969 to more Mariners flew by Mars. 6 and 7 and showed us more of Mars and suggested it had old river valleys besides the craters...

From Romance to Reality moon & Mars Plans
Apollo-based Venus/Mars Flybys, study performed for the NASA Headquarters Joint Action Group by the Spacecraft Engineering Branch, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, September 1967.NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center commissioned the Early Manned Planetary Interplanetary Roundtrip Expeditions (EMPIRE) studies in 1962 [read] [read]. EMPIRE was the first in a series of NASA studies of piloted planetary flyby missions. Even as the EMPIRE contractors completed their flyby studies, however, the Mariner 2 probe undermined the piloted flyby concept by performing the first automated flyby exploration of Venus (December 1962). Mariner 4 performed a similar feat at Mars in June 1967. Despite doubts at high levels about the desirability of piloted flybys, the NASA Headquarters-led Planetary Joint Action Group (JAG) commenced planning for a 1975 piloted flyby mission as a "new start" in the Fiscal Year (FY) 1969 NASA budget. The JAG had some reason to be hopeful that its flyby mission might be funded. In January 1967, President Lyndon Johnson had requested a $5.1-billion FY 1968 NASA budget, a modest increase over FY 1967. In this report, a follow-on to the October 1966 JAG "Phase 1" study [read], the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston proposes a 90-ton, 21.6-foot-diameter flyby spacecraft with four modules. They are (aft to fore in flight/bottom to top on the launch pad):

EP wrote: After the Mariner IV images of Mars came back in 1964, that illusion ended, at least for anyone with any sense - even Webb would not speak up in favor of manned flight to Mars when pressed by Weisner - and it was Johnson who really stopped it -

Chris writes: You sure have some fantasy going here...
WEBB: Well, I did not know until maybe two or three months ago that after I left NASA von Braun and Tom Paine tried to get Congress to accept a mission to Mars composed of two space ships with six men in each spacecraft. My policy has always been to make sure we did Apollo well and learned as much from it as we could. We had to learn the capability to operate out in space. As Levine points out in Managing NASA in the Apollo Era,5 we didn't have a long range plan because we didn't have another mission, such as landing on Mars, because we knew the fact that we were planning one would leak to Congress and cause us to lose the support essential to finish Apollo. Well, I think Paine had an obligation to try to move from Apollo as we succeeded into another era of NASA. And NASA has proved that it could survive. You not only finished Apollo, but you finished the lunar flights with the Saturn 5. You've seen the Skylab, the Space Lab, the Shuttle. I mean, these have all been very successful things that show NASA had the capability to plan such post-Apollo projects, even though we did not formally plan a major post-Apollo mission.

Interviewee: Mr. James Webb

EP wrote: What the public would like NASA to spend their money on is finding the next asteroid or comet to hit the Earth well before the time it hits -

Chris writes: And you say the folks in the Mars Society are living a fantasy...

The public could careless about your agenda...till some big assed rock hits them on the head most people will worry about Saddam Hussein over asteroid Hasse!

--Chris Vancil