The 21st Annual Mars Society Conference in Pasadena this weekend

The 21st Annual International Mars Society Convention starts tomorrow in Pasadena, California and will last through Sunday.  Check out the schedule (pdf) packed with keynote talks and multiple parallel session tracks. There are over 40 different sessions listed in the Conference flyer (pdf).

I expect the Mars Society Youtube Channel will provide a live webcast and will later include recordings of presentations. If you are in Southern California this week, you can attend via registration at the door.

Mars Society co-founder and president Bob Zubrin previewed the conference on a recent episode of The Space Show.

One of the highlights of the event will be a debate on the utility and cost-effectiveness of NASA’s proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a human-tended facility to be put into orbit around the Moon: Timely Debate on Lunar Orbit Platform-Gateway at Mars Society Convention – The Mars Society. NASA is presenting LOG-G as one of the ways to use the Moon to prove technology that will be useful later for Mars missions. Zubrin is highly skeptical that LOP-G is useful for either Moon or Mars missions.

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