Saturday, July 09, 2005

As I continue to throw out and clean up my possessions, I have been scanning a few things that don't need to be kept in hard copy form, for example: the notes I took at the lecture of Dr. England about Mars and space travel. (I may have been the only person in the audience scribbling madly the entire time.)

So here it is in PDF form, with no accompanying clarifications. Therefore I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. (No, I just mean about the notes!)

3 comments:

Tim said...

Okay, under your heading for Why Mars? you have a list of things, and I wasn't sure if he was arguing for or against going to Mars? Or was he simply showing both sides of the coin?

I was interested to see that he was discussing the impact of China's space program though. Can you remember what all he said about that? If not, that's okay, I'm really just curious.

Thanks for sharing. Space geeks everywhere appreciate it!

liz said...

He's arguing for going straight to Mars, rather than wasting various resources starting by a return to the moon first.

As far as China goes, he basically said that we are slip-sliding away as any kind of space power, given Chinese and even Russian efforts in that direction. And that China is turning out people with the right stuff for space efforts.

He decried the current administration's lack of interest in and understanding of earth science, and said that we currently have to find other ways (than scientific interest) to motivate R & D in space travel.

liz said...

....like (obviously) profit. For example, advancing R & D in robotics, related to unmanned craft.

I wish I could have shown some of his slides. They were awesome, in a very geeky way.