Day two of the convention is over and tonight I have a better feeling about this organization... not a great feeling but a better one.  The reason for the slight shift is likely due to getting actual questions answered. 

First off, in the morning I asked Patt Czarnik, the Society's Membership Director, what exactly the MS membership numbers were.  Knowing that the NSS is considered the big guy and also knowing that their American membership is only allegedly 12,000 gave me some concerns about the Mars Society. 

And the number is, not including international chapters)... 1000.

I tried not to show shock, and am always mindfull that the Mossad has been known to be very effective with the smallist personel resources in their community ;-). Dedication and determination are the real keys.  And that's where this next number comes into play.

I asked how many people, member and non member, had paid to get into the convention.  Over 400 was the total and the registered member count was 240.

Hmm.  Pretty good non-member walk-in numbers, helped by this being a tech university town with a summer program and this being the home of Lockheed-Martin and other aerospace companies, plus having the lineup including the Babylon5 creator and lots of Phoenix sessions (and I have a feeling that after the Fortune cover story and recent CNN blips Elon Musk's Saturday appearance might bump the number up even higher).

But it was the member totals that got me thinking.  There are only about a thousand American members and about 25% of all of those are here.  I'm still thinking about that... is that a good ratio or not?

I tell you one thing... just knowing the numbers seemed to settle my mind, it's good to have a more solid starting point.

Let's switch gears to the sessions.  Today there were *5* tracks... so they have no want for content and attendees are getting very personalized sessions. 

For me, the first presentation of Track 1 was great.  Professor Michael Bosch, President Hamburger Fern-Hochschule University of Applied Science, discussed the EU's Jules Verne mission and then went into Europe's reactions and plans (hopes) for Space in light of America's announcment that the Orion CEV would not be developed with any international participlation. 

Finally, here was the "we'll just go it alone" statement that had briefly appeared on some sites a few years ago but since had been replaced (at least in the American Space related resources) with the big "International cooperation is working out fine" spin statements.

Well, the Bosch made it clear that the proposal going to the EU in November is in fact to "go it alone" to the Moon and to Mars.  The EU's space community does not want to play junior partner any more.  They are still strongly considering a team up wth the Russians due to the French allegiences but even that idea did not seem to make Bosch very happy.  He's not a good poker face.

And I don't blame him at all. If I were a European I'd wnat to finally have a real PR breakthrough with a real spacecraft. 

The problem of course is apparent from just a few reads of the British Interplanetary Society member forums and their Spaceflight magazine letters to the editor... the mind is willing but the flesh is weak.  The people want it but the governments are flatly doing it only lip service; and the people aren't being fooled.

I asked Bosch after the session what this proposal would mean for American contractors, specifically asking if American individuals who are willing and desiring to help could they get jobs with European companies (the way many aerospace companies here are restricted from hiring non-US workers for "national security" reasons). His response was that the proposal is going to be a buy-in; where countries that want to be involved will have to pay their way up front and in the end will get payback based on the buy-in amounts (under the condition that it REMAINS a European project so non-Euro countries could only be "junior partners" - tit for tat.  So, if the U.S.A. bought in then they wold be allowed to participate and then American workers would be allowed to join the effort.  From his perspective it seems reasonable, the USA does it that way to them, but from a worker standpoint it's tough to be on the shit end of the stick.

Like I pointed out though... Bosch was here to talk about the successes of Jules Verne and the hopes for the ESA future... getting that big plan passed this year by the Anti-Space EU politicians appears less than realistic. 

But it's all relative, since most people here are into getting to Mars and that seems pretty crazy all by itself :).