Woke up this morning not expecting this! I Forgot all about the World Affairs Conference at the University of Colorado until my wife reminded me. So I changed my day around (late night tonight) and we went to see what was <ahref="http://www.colorado.edu/cwa/schedule.html?year=2004">on the schedule this year.

We just got back from a long day, capped by a discussion entitled "Space Policy: One Small Step Forward, Two Giant Steps Back". The Panelists? Ed Lu and Rusty Schweikart. What a treat to see these two men holding forth in the cosy atmosphere of Fiske Planetarium on campus. The slides looked great on the curved surface above our reclined seats. Sadly, we missed the first ten minutes or so; the previous talk ran long and we had to go to the other side of campus.

Ed's big points were that NASA needs a "clear goal". He said the shuttle must be phased out. He also said he has taken a liking to the Soyeuz craft, for it's simplicity, cost. and reliability. It needs up-grades, but he said "a spherical capsule doesn't have wings that can fall off". About the cost of a manned Mars mission, Ed said the margin of error of a 200 billion price tag is equal to the estimate: +/- 200 billion. In response to a question, Ed said that he thought the astronaut core would remain at a level of about 100, for now.

Rusty started off by saying that the new changes are a "vision without a goal" and later hoped that this policy is more than "My daddy didn't have a space policy, but I do" approach. They both stressed there is no new money here, just an adjustment of how that money is spent.

Rusty went on to stress the importance of asteroid study, especially near earth ones. He had a great graphic here of the known asteroids and a really cool animation of the paths of near earth asteroids over the past year. Really put the issue into perspective. You could tell Rusty wanted to go on and on about this, but time was running short so he had to end his slides early. Rats. This is how he put it: exploration is usually based on three things: greed (resources), fear (of the harm of the unknown), and curiosity. A moon misson satisfies two of those (greed & curiosity), a Mars mission only one (curiosity), and asteroid study has all three. You can argue this all you want, I'm just reporting. He also brought up the idea of using misions to asteroids as a jumping off mission to Mars.

Another issue he addressed was the scrubbed Hubble mission by asking "What would the old NASA have done? He didn't answer his own question, just threw it out there.

Anyway, there was lots more, but my notes are rather thin. They both strongly believe that humans colonize our solor system: the question is when. Rusty and Ed are going before the Senate on Thursday. I missed a couple of other panels they were on that looked really good.

I'll be seeing Rusty again tommorrow at a panel entitled "Exploring Mars and Beyond...So What?" at 11:00. Joining him on the panel are William Hartmann, Andrew Revkin, and Seth Shostak. Well, this should be interesting! I'll try to take better notes, and pictures:

That's Rusty on the left, Ed's in the middle, and the moderator, Mike Shull, on the right.

(Bad light, focus...I know... it's a *#&%$* planetarium...I ran it through like five filters, too! The zoom shots are really bad. I think flash is rude during a talk. )

Just thought I'd share my day.

jms

Did I mention, despite massive state budget cuts, everything at the conference is still, and always has been, FREE?