The View From Missive Control

First, my apologies that this issue is arriving a bit later than the last few. Between trips to California and Chicago and the holidays, my time has been a bit tighter scheduled than usual. I’d like to welcome board member and new contributor Steve Wolfe to the pages of the new SFN. Steve assures me in a faxed note that he plans to become a regular contributor. We, of course, will hold him to it.

Greg Zsidisin has managed his usual comprehensive roundup of the latest in space news, despite battling one of those delightful end-of-summer colds. Robin Venuccio gives us another of her fun book reviews, this time for the preschool set. And Carolyn Josephs catches us up on the last minute details of the upcoming teacher’s conference. I add to her request for volunteers – the tables at this conference need manning (or is that “personning” these days?), and we need cars to help transport materials and equipment.

Speaking of conferences, though I was out of town and unable to attend the Practical Robotic Interstellar Flight conference at the end of August, I understand it went quite well. We can all, I’m sure, look forward to a forthcoming report from at least one of the attendees (hint, hint). Darrell Coles also promises an upcoming article on financing space exploration. Other future articles in the works that look promising cover the areas of online space advocacy, more on solar-powered satellites, and Mashall Savage’s Millennial Project.

George Lewycky has agreed to speak again at our upcoming meeting, Sunday, September 18. George is an amateur astronomer, and a professional financial systems programmer, who got observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope last year (along with a number of other amateurs). George used Hubble’s spectrometer to scan Saturn’s moon Titan for signs of formaldehyde, a complex molecule thought to be the early basis of the development of life

George will speak about his findings, the ongoing effort to interpret his data, and other recent Hubble findings. He will be showing slides of Hubble views of the Jupiter comet impacts last July.