Howdy everyone! Things are finally starting to gel for Moon Day, and we finally have the splash and the event details up at the Frontiers of Flight Museum website.
As with any sophomore effort, it has been rough, and there have been some big fails along the way, but it looks like things are going to turn out just fine.
My biggest fail was Richard Garriott, who had to drop out because something else came up. Coupled with not being able to get someone from UT Southwestern to speak about space medicine, that means that the ISS is basically out as a major theme of the event this year. We’re definitely going to have to start earlier on lining up speakers for next year.
That’s not to say that we don’t have a spectacular lineup for everyone.
The event itself is Sunday, July 18th, from 1-5pm at the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Love Field in Dallas (just north of Mockingbird on Lemmon), home of the Apollo 7 capsule and a genuine Moon rock.
In the main auditorium, we’re going to start out with Neil Milburn from Armadillo Aerospace, who’s going to talk about rockets and has promised some volumific videos of tests. Neil is at 2pm, and then at 3:30 we’re going to have local Solar System Ambassador Ron DiIulio talk about the formation of asteroids and our Moon, and give away a meteorite as a door prize. We’ve got lots of other door prizes as well, but they’re a surprise.
[Auditorium Update: To help fill in the first hour of time in the auditorium we’re going to be screening the independent movie “Postcards from the Future“. Very cool]
In the upstairs classroom we’ve got the young’uns. McCartney Taylor from the Texas Meteorite Lab is going to give a talk on meteorite hunting, including thumbnails on how to pick them out from their surroundings. Again, that’s at 2pm, which allows folks whose curiosity was piqued by the after story of asteroids (like, after they hit our atmosphere and tumble to Earth) can then head into the auditorium to hear the before story, about where scientists believe they came from and how they formed. So we’ve got asteroids covered.
I’m up next in the classroom, at 3:30, to talk about “The 21st Century Moon: America’s Next Industrial Frontier” Basically, take the last couple of years worth of posts here at OotC, and digest them down to a 1 to 1.5 hour (with Q&A) session. Unfortunately, I don’t have a meteorite to give away, as I use what few I have for hands-on outreach and education purposes, and my pallasite is just too darn pretty to give away, but I do have a small yin of chaos in my big yang of order.
In the kids classroom downstairs, local Solar System Ambassador Cynthia Whisennand will be running a Toys in Space class (twice, at 2 and 3:30 to keep the balance). I’m guessing the 2pm is going to be seeing a bigger turnout, as I don’t think she has a meteorite to give away either.
So that’s the talky-talky classes. Downstairs in the Workshop DARS is going to be running a makey-makey rocket-building class, which was supposed to end in time for a 3:30 talk by Mr. Milburn from Armadillo in the upstairs classroom, but we ended up having to move Neil into the auditorium to take advantage of its awesome audio abilities, and Ron was already slotted for the later slot so that the meteorite would be given away basically at the end of the event (for effect). So that’s a tough rocket dilemma right there - build a model rocket, or go see videos about Armadillo making real rockets.
Almost forgot, upstairs in the hallway leading to the auditorium we finally have the art show up. These are various pieces I’ve accumulated over the years for the Lunar Library, many of them very nicely framed. The museum likes it so much they want to keep it up till Labor Day in September. The first piece, Earthrise, is from a private collection, and exhibited by virtue of a deal struck on a smile and a handshake at this year’s ISDC, but everything else is mine. Including all of the toys in the display case. Unlike the display of Apollo-era toys downstairs, these are all relatively recent toys that can be found in stores or on the internet. Unless you live in the U.S., in which case you can’t have the LEGO game Lunar Command (nyah nyah).
Yet. I’m sure it will be out eventually here stateside, but I wanted it for the Lunar Library, and made sure to pick up a copy while I was in France for this year’s ISU Symposium. I’m still waiting on a LEGO Lunar Electric Rover, which is what I really want. And for the next space playsets to be Moon-themed ones, but not frikkin’ Apollo-retreads, again, rather Moon Base and LER and Lunar mining playsets. And a LEGO video game, where you build stuff and solve puzzles on the Moon. C’mon LEGO Techs, it can’t be that hard! Oh, and we’ve also got the new Shuttle Adventure playset on display as well, and a plush astronaut Snoopy, and three different space Barbies (I understand there’s a fourth one I need to get to complete the collection, but do you know how stupid it feels for an early fortysomething to be buying Barbie dolls? I usually just say it’s for my goddaughter (Shout Out to Xiomara in P-town!)).
[Art Update: The Museum Director is starting to get ambitious. Now that most everything is off my walls and in the museum, he wants me to consider letting ‘Glimpses from the Future: Art from the Lunar Library’ go for a tour around the country. Buh..wha? He’s serious, though. He’s already done the catalog, and his team of educators can come up with an educator guide to accompany the exhibit. The toys won’t go, but the art will. Wow, dude, that’s heavy man. Gonna have to cogitate on that one for a bit…]
Speaking of family-friendly fun, let’s wander out to the main floor of the museum, officially the Richard W. Cree Main Exhibit Gallery. Here we have the museum’s long-term display of the Apollo 7 capsule thanks to the efforts of Walt & Dot Cunningham, as well as a Moon walk display that houses the museum’s piece of the Moon. They have some assorted other goodies as well, including the aforementioned display case of Apollo-era toys.
The main floor will be lined with tables for the various exhibitors, as well as some themed handout tables, including one I’m setting aside specifically for space commercialization efforts. The exhibitors lined up so far are:
-Armadillo Aerospace (from Caddo Mills)
-Astronaut Training Center (in North Richland Hills)
-Dallas Area Rocket Society (which launches in Frisco)
-Dallas Mars Society (meets in Plano)
-NSS of North Texas (meets in Irving)
-Solar System Ambassadors
-Spaceminers.org (from Hurst)
-Texas Astronomical Society (meets at UT Dallas)
-Texas Meteorite Lab (from Austin)
-UNT Planetarium (up in Denton, home of the excellent Recycled Books)
-UTA Planetarium (from Arlington)
We’re also going to have a vendor for math and science t-shirts, and we’re trying to get Half-Price Books to have a booth to sell their awesome selection of space books, way better than any of the bookboxes. Texas Meteorite Lab is also going to be selling meteorites.
My major exhibitor fail was SpaceX. I’d love to have them come up from McGregor for the day and show off their stuff for everyone. Never did hear back from my inquiry. I may have been a bit too pushy, and that probably ticked them off. This may have to be the kind of thing where I have to put some effort into leveraging off of my NSS and NewSpace contacts to get introduced to Elon and get to know him and see if I can get some impetus from the top for having a SpaceX display at this quirky space event each July in North Texas he’s heard about called Moon Day. Or maybe just a couple bundles of handouts.
A minor fail was Paragon SDC, which has an office down in Houston. I’d met a young gentleman at the Space Economy Leadership Summit down in Austin who thought it would be a good thing for his company to have a presence at the kind of educational outreach event we’re putting together. He did his best but it was just too short of a notice to put something together, but maybe next year. I did make sure to cc: Grant and Taber on my thank you to him. They’re both SGF and ISU, so I know that they ‘get’ it, and maybe we’ll have better luck next year. Crap, and I should have gotten in touch with Stone Aerospace down in Austin.
Most all of the exhibitors are going to have handouts, and we have boxes pouring into the museum with handouts from folks like Space Camp, Google Lunar X Prize, FAA, NASA IPP, LPI, NSS, and more.
Yours truly decided to take a chance and pre-spend my (maybe) annual bonus [Update: I did get one this year, and it was enough to cover it. Double plus good!] and I ordered up some ‘Lunar Sample Bags’ for the kids. We’ve got 250 bags, and right before the event a whole bunch of volunteers at the museum are going to stuff the bags with all of the kid-oriented materials like stickers, puzzles, posters, pins, and miscellaneous other goodies. Each kid will get one at the door, and they can add stuff as they wander through the event. It’s basically a pouch with large flap that has the printing on it. Officially, the flap says:
“Moon Day
Lunar Sample Bag
Supplied by the Lunar Library
www.outofthecradle.net”
Note that I didn’t date it, so if any are left over they can be used next year. And since I paid for them, I can put my web address on there. Such is the power of the purse.
[Update: Just saw the bags. 4All Promos did a fine job, and I think they’re going to go over well. Alert readers may have noticed that their ads seem to be popping up on space-related websites. I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection. I did get some flack at the NSS-NT chapter meeting for not offering the chapter the opportunity to underwrite the bags, which is a valid point and one I hadn’t considered, but once I’d told them how much I’d paid the consensus seemed to swing to maybe next year]
All of the rest of the handouts are going to be put out in the display area on the main floor. I want at least one commercially-themed table, but I’m thinking we’re going to have at least two or three tables worth of stuff.
Most of the exhibitors seem to be going for two tables, though TAS and DARS each want three (and DARS is maybe thinking of bringing a couple of their own). NSS of North Texas, as co-sponsor of the event, gets to have six tables and they’re all going to be packed with stuff, two each on the themes of ISS, Moon, and Asteroids. We’re going to be running our chapter raffle to raise money for our Science Fair Scholarship, so be sure to bring lots of dollar bills. Next year, three NSS-NT chapter members will be amongst the many judges at the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair,and will award whatever monies we’ve gathered (plus a $35 administrative fee to pay for the winner’s meal at the awards luncheon) to the project that best exemplifies NSS’s goals of people living and working in space. Since it’s our money we’re giving away, we get to decide the criteria for winning, and it’s hashed out amongst the three judges as they see what kind of projects generally fit the overall theme. Even though the chapter has a very small cushion in its bank account, I insist that the project raise its own funds. This way, it’s not something we do until the chapter runs out of money.
Right now the publicity blitz is on. The museum has the splash up on their website, leading to further details, and I’m in the process of going around to libraries, bookstores, comic shops, teacher supply stores, and anyplace else I can think of that has a community bulletin board. I used to like Borders because they had a bulletin board in most of their stores, but it looks like they’ve gone the uber-corporate B&N route and yanked all of them. I’m generally finding that the smaller and locally owned businesses are much more receptive to putting up a flyer announcing the event. Also, the libraries in less-well-off neighborhoods are much more receptive than those in wealthier neighborhoods, who tend to have more of a “we have to run it through channels to get approval” mindset.
Having posted some 50 flyers around town at this point, I think the thing that most annoys me is the question “Is it free?”. No, it’s regular museum admission, but you’re getting all of this extra space goodness for one day only. Gee, it would be nice if we could find an underwriter to cover the ticket costs, but in case folks haven’t noticed the economy is a bit rough at the moment, and finding underwriting is never easy. That’s why I ended up springing for the Lunar Sample Bags, because even though we shopped it around no one grabbed at the opportunity to get their logo or website on the bags.
Sigh, everyone wants something for nothing. Seems to be pathological in this society.
I just sent around the e-mail to all of the exhibitors where we get their requirements for tables, power, special needs, &c. I also asked them to ask their members to put Moon Day into the social networking realm if they can. Next step is to put the event on all of the online event calendars, and since we’ve got an art show associated with the event I have to hit up all of the online art calendars as well. The usual methodology is to google for Dallas online event calendars and pick through the first three to five pages for the best links. Luckily I already went through that exercise last year and already have a list.
[Update: Uh, oh…publicity fail. I just got word from Space.com that my attempt to post an announcement to the ‘User Announcements’ section of their Message Boards (which was set up specifically for that purpose) like I did last year has been denied, as:
“The reported post has the only purpose to advertise for a website or another product.”
Alrighty then. FWIW, I registered my user name, ‘kadetken’ in 1998, and have kept it through 4 or 5 crash and burns of their comments database, that being the reason I post there only infrequently. I also have old articles from Ad Astra Online, which was supposed to be an online version of NSS’s member magazine (which is darn good) that NSS members would contribute to, which they didn’t, in droves. I have, IIRC, three articles up over there, which Space.com doesn’t provide you any means of accessing except through the Search function. Do I feel spurned? Oh, just a wee bit, but I’m used to it]
[Further Update: Publicity success. I’ve got the event on local online event calendars at the Dallas Morning News ‘GuideLive‘, KERA’s ‘Art & Seek‘, the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau Event Calendar, and I’m playing phone tag with the blogger at the weekly Dallas Observer. Bruce at the museum spent half an hour with a talk show guy out of Phoenix, AZ where he was able to mention the event numerous times. That’s where the social networking comes in, as everyone knows someone in or from Texas. The museum is starting to get calls from people wanting to know what’s in the Sample Bags. I’m getting one of those feelings that we may have good media coverage this year.]
So it’s all coming together nicely. I do credit the experience of co-chairing an ISDC for helping with the overall ’systems engineering’ of putting the event together, as well as developing a lot of contacts in the space community. I’d have to credit my early years back in the 90s as a ‘community organizer’ of sorts for knowing how to work with disparate non-profit groups and serve in my community. My year at ISU certainly gave me a much deeper understanding of the space field than most, enough to get a cum laude. My work here at OotC and with the Lunar Library have certainly had their benefit, but it has taken years of work.
And now to toot my own horn, I’m going to be giving one of the talks in the upstairs classroom, at 3:30pm, on the topic of “The 21st Century Moon: America’s Next Industrial Frontier“. I’m still gestating the final structure of the talk, which is going to have to delve extensively into EML-1, but it’ll be good, trust me.
So if you can make it out to the Frontiers of Flight Museum on Sunday, July 18th from 1-5 pm, then we’d love to see you. If you can’t make it, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues. This is going to be the biggest space event in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex this year, so you don’t want to miss it!
