"30 Years of the Planetary Society" - Lecture and Presentation

A FREE recording of a lecture and presentation given by ANDY FLEMING at the November 12, 2010 meeting of the Cleveland and Darlington Astronomical Society, Wynyard Planetarium, Stockton-on-Tees on November 12, 2010.

2010 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Pasadena-based, California Planetary Society (TPS) by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman. TPS now reaches over 300,000 people worldwide through its membership, website, syndicated radio program and podcast, Twitter, Facebook and emailed newsletter. It inspires and involves the world's public in space exploration through advocacy, projects, and education, and is the largest and most influential public space organisation group on Earth.

It's dedicated to exploring the solar system and seeking life beyond Earth, is non-governmental and non-profit, and is funded entirely by the support of its members. The TPS mission is To inspire the people of Earth to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere.

In promoting space exploration it leads by example, and its initiatives include:
* Private ventures, such as the solar sail.
* Public-private partnerships, such as the Mars Microphone.
* Promoting grand and ambitious adventures, such as human missions to Mars.
* TPS continues to find more ways for members of the public to participate directly in space exploration.
* Inspiring the public to explore other worlds and seek other life.
* It believes that our next age of exploration will be a vital, exciting, adventurous time, with our members involved in the adventure of making great discoveries and acquiring new knowledge about our solar system neighbourhood — and about ourselves.

With gaps in my local astronomical society's monthly talks in 2010, I immediately offered to deliver a presentation about the historic thirty years of TPS, of which I am a keen member.

Both my society committee and TPS agreed to my offer and with four months' lead time I immediately began compiling a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow, along with embedded multimedia files. I'd never used the software before, but I found it easy to use. Within a couple of weeks I had produced a file thirty slides detailing TPS's achievements and projects complete with bullet points, audio, videos and photographs/graphics. I also produced a more in-depth script should detailed questions be asked.

In compiling the slideshow I made much use of the excellent TPS website, and used other sources including the NASA website, using many images from the latter. I also included a montage of weekly Planetary Radio podcast that I produced from archived audio files on the TPS website.

My work was signed off and accepted by TPS, and I then liaised with my local planetarium (that hosts our meetings) regarding the technical aspects of projecting the show onto the planetarium dome and using the audio facilities. All files were sent via the internet to the Planetarium Director who re-compiled the show on the planetarium's PC.

All that was left to do was promote my TPS presentation in the local media in the north east of England and in the UK's 'Astronomy Now' magazine.

In the event 60 members of the public and our society attended. The presentation went smoothly with few glitches, and questions were fielded at the end. All TPS promotional merchandise was distribute from a stand I had created before the presentation.

Presenting the show was a most worthwhile and uplifting experience. I hopefully did TPS proud, and my wife and son certainly noticed I seemed to be thoroughly enjoying myself!

Please now, enjoy the presentation in its entirety, but bear in mind that it was made in a public planetarium, not in a studio using ordinary non-broadcast computer equipment!

(C) Andromeda Child Blog (2011); (c) Pear Shaped Productions (2010)

For astronomy, cosmology, science and much, much more, please visit my blog at: http://andromedachild.blogspot.com/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• astronomy
• cosmology
• space exploration
• SETI
• astrobiology
• Planetary Radio
• exoplanets
• Mars
• Phobos Grunt

[Demosthenes140]

Unfortunaately Hansbo11, the lecture was recorded in a packed planetarium with my very own personal equipment... just a laptop and a PC microphone. I will try and upload transcripts in the near future.

[hansbo11]

the audio sucks. :( isnt there a better version?