Later today dozens of Mars advocates will be swarming Capitol Hill for the 2009 Great Mars Blitz, an afternoon of lobbying in the same vein as March Storm, the NSS Space Blitz, and related events. The purpose of the blitz, according to the site, is “to tell members of Congress and their staff why the United States needs to commit to an ambitious human space flight program that will get us to Mars in the 2020s”, although they don’t mention any specific legislative measures they’re pushing for. The Blitz is part of the Mars Society’s annual convention, running today through Sunday at the University of Maryland in College Park. The society ran a similar event in 2006, the last time the organization held its annual conference in the DC area; Chris Carberry, who organized the Blitz (and is now executive director of the organization), wrote a summary of that 2006 event in The Space Review, complete with a tale about some $2 bills…
(I’ll also note that I’ll be appearing on a panel Friday evening at the conference about “Reporting Space”, moderated by ex-CNN space reporter Miles O’Brien.)
Any word on whether the “Reporting Space” session is open to the public?
I believe all the evening sessions are open to the public w/o charge but I could be mistaken. You might want to check their website.