Featured speakers range from scientists involved in planetary research to entrepreneurs interested in for-profit space travel. Movie director James Cameron, a Mars society member who is working on several upcoming movie projects will be there. Cameron has purchased the film rights to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy. Robinson will also be there, as will Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who will speak about making the leap from the moon to Mars.
Serious academic studies to be presented include work by Everett Gibson, a researcher at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Gibson made news in 1996 when he co-authored a paper announcing that a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica contained evidence of extraterrestrial life. That conclusion has been one of the most hotly-contested ideas in recent planetary science. Gibson will discuss new analysis of a Martian meteorite found in Egypt, analysis that, he says, "shows even stronger support than our original hypothesis" that Martian meteorites show evidence of life on that planet.
Dozens of presentations will offer theories and techniques for getting to and surviving on Mars, and for using Martian resources to build things once we get there.
International Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer and author of "The Case for Mars," will discuss plans to privately finance research projects that will eventually lead to human exploration of Mars.
The International Mars Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploration of Mars.
It's three goals are to increase public interest in Mars, motivate political support for Mars missions, and conduct scientific and engineering projects that will contribute to Mars exploration efforts.
"We want to become the 'Jacques Cousteau' Society of Mars exploration -- initiating a series of private projects that will be valuable in themselves and spread the vision of humans pioneering Mars," Zubrin said.
The first such project is already well underway. This summer the society opened the Mars Arctic Research Station on a rocky craterous island in the Canadian Arctic. The base is to serve as a test range for ways of conducting human Mars-exploration missions.
The conference comes at a time when funding for Mars missions is threatened by proposed cuts to NASA's budget. To fight the cuts, the Mars Society recently sent out a mass e-mail to its 8,000 members, listing every member of the House and Senate appropriations committees and their addresses and asking members to write letters to save NASA's funding.
Conference attendees will have a chance to hear "The View From NASA Headquarters" at the conference on Friday, during a speech given by Alan Ladwig, former senior advisor to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, who is now a space.com executive.
The Second Annual International Mars Society Convention begins Thursday, August 12 and continues through Sunday, August 15.
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