A conference, in early May. What I find interesting is who is not on the schedule. Check out the “Z”s.

I may try to raise money for a publicity event there for my book.

Are we on the verge of a breakthrough? Let’s hope so, but I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s a game changer if it happens.

Here’s an interesting schematic that describes how they plan to keep crew alive to Mars and back. Doesn’t look like they’re trying to recover water from feces, but that makes sense if they’re going to use them for radiation protection. And they’re venting methane. I’d think that it would be interesting to consider it as fuel for RCS, but perhaps that’s too high a technology risk for a mission that has to leave in less than five years. I don’t see any power input to the system, but I guess that’s a separate issue.

Here’s the full briefing to FISO.

[Via NewSpace Watch]

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, looking over the briefing, the current baseline seems to be two launches, one for propellant and one for crew, within a couple weeks of each other.