"... the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining ..."
“We have at last glimpsed the surface of the fabled world, Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining in the Solar System today... ”
Carolyn Porco
I'm not your typical con-goer. I'm shy enough that I'm uncomfortable at the parties but I'm not so shy that I can't talk to panelists before, during, and after a panel -- but I am shy enough that I can't talk to a panelist in the hall. I will smile at anyone who smiles at me and respond appropriately when spoken to but since I can't imagine that what I have to say is of much interest to anyone else I don't usually initiate any idle chatter.
But neither is the ConFusion series your typical con. It's far more literary than the other cons I've attended, without the TV or movie stars most other cons vie for; however, ConFusion's Author and Media Guests of Honor are rock stars for the weekend, even more so this year when both Cat Rambo (AGoH) and Cory Doctorow (MGoH) showed up.
Surprisingly (or not), so is the Science Guest of Honor. Last year, Kevin M. Dunn (Caveman Chemistry) was the Science GoH and I saw a great presentation on the chemistry and physics of textiles and soap. In the past I've attended panels where doctoral candidates have debunked FTL travel and engineers discussed rocket cars. This year the Science GoH was a husband-and-wife duo, Ralph D. Lorenz and Elizabeth (Zibi) Turtle, both planetary scientists working at the Johns Hopkins Univ Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
Ralph and Zibi have been working on the Cassini Saturn project for years, Ralph on the Huygens probe that landed on the moon Titan, amongst other things, and Zibi on the imaging systems of Cassini itself. Zibi is also co-investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, the LRO itself scheduled for lift-off this April. The LRO will be looking at the permanent shadows in the moon's craters using various devices and perhaps eventually a more detailed look at the crater Aristarchus (which apparently is the scene of many mysterious happenings) will be included in its mission list. Ralph is hoping Titan will be selected for the next big outer planet mission, although Europa has just as strong a case for it to be selected instead.
I've never been a big fan of solar system science. My favorite science fiction has always been based in the far future, with FTL travel and ansibles, with aliens and adventures and mysteries (aliens not required). To me, science fiction set in the solar system was old hat, based on old science, with nothing new to be told, although I would read a story with a near-Earth setting if exceptionally well written. Exploring the solar system was like riding a bicycle in your backyard instead of venturing out into the world. I never paid attention to announcements about the planets (except Pluto's sad deplanetization, of course) because planets weren't really astronomical: astronomy was about stars, not piddling little chunks of rock.
Boy, was I wrong! After attending Ralph's first presentation on Cassini-Huygens, I completely abandoned my plans to attend the more literary panels and concentrated on the science ones instead. Hour after hour, Ralph and Zibi gave us a great picture of what NASA is doing today, of the projects' missions, their failures, their successes, and their hopes. If we had only had the one SGoH, I'm sure he/she would've collapsed from exhaustion by Saturday afternoon. The only time they faltered was when they found themselves on a panel for which the con hadn't prepared them, but even then they (along with Jim Beyer from the Michigan Mars Society) had audience questions to keep them going.
I received way too much data to process it all in one weekend, but I learned one thing for sure: don't dismiss any extraterrestrial objects just because they're only a few hundred thousand or million kilometers away. The distance of a celestial body from earth doesn't need to be measured in light years for it to be fascinating. Now I can't wait to follow the next big project on twitter!
Carolyn Porco
I'm not your typical con-goer. I'm shy enough that I'm uncomfortable at the parties but I'm not so shy that I can't talk to panelists before, during, and after a panel -- but I am shy enough that I can't talk to a panelist in the hall. I will smile at anyone who smiles at me and respond appropriately when spoken to but since I can't imagine that what I have to say is of much interest to anyone else I don't usually initiate any idle chatter.
But neither is the ConFusion series your typical con. It's far more literary than the other cons I've attended, without the TV or movie stars most other cons vie for; however, ConFusion's Author and Media Guests of Honor are rock stars for the weekend, even more so this year when both Cat Rambo (AGoH) and Cory Doctorow (MGoH) showed up.
Surprisingly (or not), so is the Science Guest of Honor. Last year, Kevin M. Dunn (Caveman Chemistry) was the Science GoH and I saw a great presentation on the chemistry and physics of textiles and soap. In the past I've attended panels where doctoral candidates have debunked FTL travel and engineers discussed rocket cars. This year the Science GoH was a husband-and-wife duo, Ralph D. Lorenz and Elizabeth (Zibi) Turtle, both planetary scientists working at the Johns Hopkins Univ Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
Ralph and Zibi have been working on the Cassini Saturn project for years, Ralph on the Huygens probe that landed on the moon Titan, amongst other things, and Zibi on the imaging systems of Cassini itself. Zibi is also co-investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, the LRO itself scheduled for lift-off this April. The LRO will be looking at the permanent shadows in the moon's craters using various devices and perhaps eventually a more detailed look at the crater Aristarchus (which apparently is the scene of many mysterious happenings) will be included in its mission list. Ralph is hoping Titan will be selected for the next big outer planet mission, although Europa has just as strong a case for it to be selected instead.
I've never been a big fan of solar system science. My favorite science fiction has always been based in the far future, with FTL travel and ansibles, with aliens and adventures and mysteries (aliens not required). To me, science fiction set in the solar system was old hat, based on old science, with nothing new to be told, although I would read a story with a near-Earth setting if exceptionally well written. Exploring the solar system was like riding a bicycle in your backyard instead of venturing out into the world. I never paid attention to announcements about the planets (except Pluto's sad deplanetization, of course) because planets weren't really astronomical: astronomy was about stars, not piddling little chunks of rock.
Boy, was I wrong! After attending Ralph's first presentation on Cassini-Huygens, I completely abandoned my plans to attend the more literary panels and concentrated on the science ones instead. Hour after hour, Ralph and Zibi gave us a great picture of what NASA is doing today, of the projects' missions, their failures, their successes, and their hopes. If we had only had the one SGoH, I'm sure he/she would've collapsed from exhaustion by Saturday afternoon. The only time they faltered was when they found themselves on a panel for which the con hadn't prepared them, but even then they (along with Jim Beyer from the Michigan Mars Society) had audience questions to keep them going.
I received way too much data to process it all in one weekend, but I learned one thing for sure: don't dismiss any extraterrestrial objects just because they're only a few hundred thousand or million kilometers away. The distance of a celestial body from earth doesn't need to be measured in light years for it to be fascinating. Now I can't wait to follow the next big project on twitter!