President Bernie Zelazny called the meeting to order at 7:30 PM in 300 Lawrence Hall on the Sul Ross Campus.  There were 16 people present.
       Bernie presented some late news on extrasolar planets, and John bell presented a program on the question of whether we should undertake a manned flight to Mars (see below).  The business meeting took place after John's presentation.
       The minutes were accepted as printed in the previous Newsletter.
       Betty Grimm submitted the following treasurer's report:

       End of minutes.

       John's first astronomy column appeared in a recent issue of the Alpine Observer.  John will write a column each month highlighting astronomical events, especially things that can be observed with the naked eye.  John's columns will have great educational potential, and will add to the visibility of the Society.  Good show, John!

       Bernie reported (from the day's Universe Today  e-news <http://www.universetoday.com>) the discovery of the largest extrasolar planet to date, 17 times the mass of Jupiter.   The new planet is orbiting a Sun-like star which is 123 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.  Like the other 50 extrasolar planets discovered so far, not even this new giant can be seen by the largest telescopes.  The new planet was discovered by measuring spectroscopic changes in the light from its parent star as the orbiting planet tugs the star in different directions, sometimes toward and sometimes away from the earth.

        Building on his earlier Mars presentation, John asked the question above, leaving the answer(s) largely up to the audience.
        In 1953, Wernher von Braun, the German (and later, American) rocket expert, proposed a manned Mars expedition for the 1970s.  Von Braun proposed a fleet of space ships to be assembled in earth orbit.  The estimated cost of the Mars expedition was $100 billion dollars (for comparison, our moon landing cost about $20 billion through 1969).  Unfortunately, the Vietnam War absorbed most of the funds that might otherwise have gone into our space program and other nonmilitary projects. 
        The search for life outside the earth provides part of the motivation for manned expeditions to Mars.  Our unmanned spacecraft have returned many excellent images from Mars showing landscapes that strongly suggest a past history of substantial amounts of water on Mars.  Some Martian landforms indicate a likely history of the formation and erosion of sedimentary rocks deposited in water.  And where there is or has been water, conditions for life may still exist.
        Several Martian meteorites, identified by their chemical composition, have been found in Antarctica.  One of these meteorites contains what appear to be supermicroscopic fossil bacteria.  These possible fossils are about 1/100 the size of bacteria living on the earth, so there is controversy as to whether these objects are really fossils or some kind of inorganic structures (but see the article on Martian Microbes in the December, 2000, Newsletter).  Life on the earth occupies a tremendous range of hostile environments, so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that life may exist on Mars, or perhaps in the oceans of Ganymede.
        President Bush [George I, that is] said in 1989 that we would go back to the moon and then to Mars, launching the Mars expedition from the moon.  The cost of this proposal was to be about $450 billion.  As we know, the expedition never happened.
        Today, the Mars Society says we can go directly to Mars from the earth at a cost of $50 billion.  The expedition would require 180 days of travel each way, plus about 560 days on Mars.  For a wealth of information on Mars, see the Mars Society website at http://www.marssociety.org
        In the discussion that followed, we were by no means unanimous in advocating a manned Mars program.  Some people felt that we have too many unsolved earthly problems to justify mounting a very expensive new space program.  Others felt that the potential gains outweighed the expenses, noting that our space program has already yielded many unforeseen benefits, ranging from Corning Ware^® to important developments in computers.
        It was also pointed out that the sun will become a red giant in about 5 billion years, incinerating the earth, and perhaps engulfing Mars as well.  Long before that time, our region of the solar system will become too hot to support us.  Indeed, we will be finished as a species if we cannot leave our current region of the solar system for safer surroundings.  It has taken life on our planet about 5 billion years to reach our present stage of development.  It is by no means obvious that we have enough time to leave this region of the galaxy before it gets too hot, so hadn't we better get busy?  Can we do it???

        (Edited from NASA, January 4, 2001)  This morning at 4:00 AM Central Standard time (0900 UT) Earth made its annual closest approach to the Sun, reaching a point called perihelion. Northerners shouldn't expect any relief from the cold, however. Although sunlight falling on Earth will be slightly more intense today than it is in July [by about 7%] winter will nevertheless continue unabated.  "Seasonal weather patterns are shaped primarily by the 23.5-degree tilt of our planet's spin axis, not by Earth's distance from the sun," explains George Lebo, a professor of astronomy at the University of Florida. "During northern winter the north pole is tilted away from the Sun. Days are short and that makes it cold. The fact that we're a little closer to the Sun in January [by about a million miles] doesn't make much difference. It's still chilly -- even here in Florida!"
        Some people (surely none of our members!) think it's colder in the winter because the earth is farther from the sun.  But when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, it's summer in the southern hemisphere, so the earth can't be farther away from the sun and closer at the same time.  Besides the longer summer days noted above, the sun's rays are more nearly perpendicular to the earth's surface in the summer.  Thus, the higher sun angle in the summer is the other major factor making summers warmer.

         (From NASA, January 15, 2001)  The Stardust spacecraft's closest approach to Earth occurred on Monday, January 15, at approximately 3:13 am PST.  The primary objective of the Earth Gravity Assist phase was to provide Stardust with an energy boost - a "slingshot" around the Earth - to increase the spacecraft's orbital period around the Sun from 2 years to 2-1/2 years and alter its flight path to intercept Comet P/Wild 2 on January 2, 2004.  Stardust was launched on Feb. 7, 1999.  It is the first U.S. space mission dedicated solely to the exploration of a comet, and the first robotic mission designed to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon.
         For further information on this historic flight, including many images, see the website at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

        We are very pleased to welcome four new members this month.  Jim Marshall is the new Alpine School Superintendent, and wife Judy is a teacher at San Vicente.  Wynne Lienhardt, a native of Canada, works as a nurse at hospitals in our region.  Bill Lewis is the new Alpine City Manager. We look forward to having these folks with us.  Please make them welcome.

If we have not yet received your dues, then please use the convenient envelope addressed to our treasurer that is included with this copy of your Newsletter.

Betty Lou Grimm, Treasurer
Big Bend Astronomical Society, Inc
1001 N 2nd Street, Apt F-22
Alpine, TX 79830