1998 Annual Report
Oregon L5 Activity Summary


Oregon L5 meetings are held on the 3rd Saturday of the month, 14:00 (2:00 pm) at the Conference Room, 1441 SE 122nd Ave., Portland, Oregon.

Contact Information:
President & Treasurer Cheryl York
Secretary & Lunar Base Research Team Chair Bryce Walden
Mars Team & Media Team Chair Tom Hanna
Legislative Action Working Group Chair Tom Billings

1998 marked the Twentieth Anniversary of Oregon L5 Society.

Our first affair of note occurred March 16 when Oregon L5 Society teamed with Rose City Astronomers to bring Hugh Gregory, an expert on the Russian space program, to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). The auditorium was filled with approximately 200 people. We also distributed NSS tabloids for the HBO program, "From the Earth to the Moon." Oregon L5 was one of a few NSS chapters who held a special party to watch the premiere of the first episode, April 5.

Also in April, Oregon L5 opened its new World Wide Web site donated by new member and website professional Gus Frederick from Silverton, Oregon. Visit the site to learn more about Oregon L5! Oregon L5 also became an "Amazon Associate," linking book reviews on our site to the Amazon.com business to generate a commission on referred orders.

Oregon L5 became a co-sponsor of the 1998 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in late May (more on our participation under LBRT below).

Oregon L5 was invited by OMSI to participate in Space Celebration July 18-19 at the museum. We set up two information / display tables inside and our MIST team had an activity outside (see below). An estimated 2,500 people visited OMSI for the event.

In July Oregon L5 moved its office space to Bourne Plaza in southeast Portland.

In August space educator Dorothy Diehl demonstrated her "Mars Pioneer Home" model at our monthly meeting. After her presentation, she turned over a major collection of memorabilia from astronaut Gordon Fullerton.

September brought Oregon L5 an opportunity to participate in Mission HOME (Harvesting Opportunities for Mother Earth), an industry campaign to publicize benefits of space research and development. Oregon L5 was present when Mission HOME representative astronaut Charlie Walker (also president of NSS) presented OMSI's Jim Todd with their "Take Up Space" award. This event was covered by local media. We also attended the gift of "Sun Suits" to children unable to tolerate raw sunlight, and toured the local NOAA Weather Service office. Local publicist Greg Leo felt strongly enough about space development that he joined our local chapter.

Oregon L5 members attended talks by JPL Mars specialist Chris McKay, former NASA Mission Controller Terry Burleson, and astronaut-turned-artist Alan Bean.

In October at our Annual General Meeting, we adopted amended Bylaws that established the new office of Archivist (held by Rea T. B. Young) and a new standing committee: the Legislative Action Working Group (LAW Group), chaired by Tom Billings. We also converted a long-uncashed check to now-deceased Gene Shoemaker to fund our Lunar Lavatube Base Model, to be called Shoemaker Station in his honor. Cheryl Lynn York became our new President.

In November Oregon L5 celebrated its 20th anniversary at two well-attended and positively reviewed parties at OryCon 20 science fiction convention. Pictures from the parties are posted on our website.

In December Oregon L5 accepted the assets from the dissolution of the Institute for Teleoperated Space Development, headed by Tom Billings. The major assets are a Mac PowerBook and an inkjet printer. Members also voted unanimously to invite the local chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to use our conference room for their bimonthly meetings. MUFON has turned to Oregon L5 members for reference and advice on space, astronomy, and atmospheric matters.

Lunar Base Research Team (LBRT; Oregon Moonbase): Assistant Professor Allen Taylor heads our Clementine Lunar Data Mining project. The first outside license to use the "JPL Adaptive Recognition Tool" (JARTool) software was granted to this project. Doug Helbling arranged the donation of 8 SUN SPARCStations from MITRON Corporation to run the program, worth in aggregate $10,785. Lewis and Clark College bought the 88 CD-ROM set of raw Clementine data, worth $880. The local office of SUN Microsystems donated extra RAM and professional help to set up the machines. The project moved with Prof. Taylor to Pacific University later in the year. In September Prof. Taylor travelled to Houston to give presentations about the project and Tom Billings' Lunar Lavatube Locator radar project to a Lunar and Planetary Institute conference on lunar datasets.

Tom Billings presented his work on the Lunar Lavatube Locator radar project to the ISDC in May, and was approached by the FINDS Foundation who suggested he apply for funding. That proposal is still pending. At ISDC astronaut Buzz Aldrin joined Tom's workshop with a discussion of orbital dynamics.

Bryce Walden and Cheryl York made presentations about exploring and utilizing lunar lava tube caves to a "Workshop for Using In Situ Resources for Construction of Planetary Outposts" held in conjunction with Space '98 in Albuquerque, New Mexico in late April (see LPI Technical Report 98-01 for the paper), and to the ISDC at the end of May. Work was begun on designing and building a display model lunar lavatube base, under the watchful eyes of Dick Steffens.

The Mars Instrument and Science Team (MIST) was not very active during 1998. We did continue our examination of Mars images for signs of lava tubes. In July as part of the Space Celebration, July 18-19, the MIST team conducted the "Sagan Lander and Rover" activity on the front courtyard at OMSI and handed out "Teleoperated Rover Operator's License" certificates to those who successfully completed the course.

Legislative Action Working Group (LAW) was formed in October under chair Tom Billings and got right to work. In November a group of Oregon L5ers met with Representative Darlene Hooley to discuss space issues. LAW Group reports regularly at L5 meetings to bring the membership news of important space legislation.

Media Team: Due to big changes in his personal life, including job changes and a courtship and marriage, Media Team chair Thomas Hanna was not as active this year as he would have liked to be. Nonetheless, when OMSI hosted the debut broadcast of HDTV with the launch of John Glenn, Oregon L5 had the only outside group table display at the event, which attracted all of Portland's media and many community leaders. Tom was a presenter at the event. Tom also produced regular radio programs and two cable TV programs through Space: The Future Frontier. Tom was interviewed by a local news station as a space expert for a special report on UFOs.

Submitted by Bryce Walden, Secretary


The Planetary Society National Space Society

Home | Intro | New Info | Join | LBRT | MIST | Space | Discussions | Contacts | Links