I will be speaking at the August 23-26 Mars Society Conference at the Pasadena Convention Center. This year will be another wonderful, informative convention with a new emphasis on VR projects we are currently getting ready to deliver for use at MDRS and eventually for Mars itself. We also have another university competition to design a heavy lander for Mars.
If you can't attend the convention, I release the slides to this web site along with links to YouTube when The Mars Society puts those together a couple months later.
Planetary Protection and Settlement
On Thursday in the Science Track room at 1:00 PM, I'll be speaking about finding ways for planetary settlement to work if and when life is found on another world. This is actually highly likely given the amount of bacteria ejected into space from meteors colliding with Earth in the early days of the solar system after bacteria had already formed. The issue is how to find a happy medium where we inhabit other worlds but we keep the existing biomes and our own habitats from interacting accidentally.
SpaceX, Methodologies, and Predictions
On Friday, I'll be speaking at 2:30 in Room 214 on SpaceX and how the NewSpace companies are accelerating so quickly over their Legacy Space counterparts. I'll also forecast how some of these efforts will turn out based on past performance and current conditions. Want a realistic estimate on when and where you will be able to fly around the Earth in a BFR for a family vacation?