In a meeting held in Denver, March 4th and 5th, the Flashline
Management Committee completed selections of the volunteers slated
for the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island during
the summer of 2001.
The selections were made out of a pool of some 250 volunteers who
responded to a Mars Society public call issued during November of
2000. Because there were many more qualified volunteers than the
slots available, the crew selection process was quite difficult,
involving successive downselects to narrow the field. Thus, in
addition to those chosen for slots this year, about 100 others were
ranked as fully qualified for crew service and were awarded alternate
crew status. We hope to include many of these alternate crew members
in future operations on Devon island, or in the Mars Desert Research
Station which we plan to have operational in the American southwest
by late fall.
All volunteers will receive letters informing them of their status
during the month of March.
The volunteers selected this year include 25 people, 12 new crew
members and 13 returning crew members of whom 19 are men and 6 are
women. Fifteen are from the US, four are Canadians, two are French,
two are British, one is from Belgium and one from Denmark. One of the
Americans was born in Australia and one of the Canadians was born in
Sri Lanka. Those selected include 4 geologists, 2 biologists, 1
chemist, 7 engineers, 2 doctors, 3 physicists, an optical scientist,
and industrial psychologist, and internet technologist, an architect,
and an independent filmmaker. The crews will be divided into 6
rotations, of which Flashline Project Scientist Pascal Lee will lead
4 and Mars Society president Robert Zubrin will lead two.
The following are the Flashline volunteer selections for the 2001
season on Devon Island.
New Volunteers 2001
(Name, Work Field, Affiliation, Citizenship)
John Blitch, Roboticist, DARPA, US
Brent Bos, Optical Scientist, Univ. of Arizona, US
Sam Burbank, Filmmaker, Independent, US
Cathrine Frandsen, Physicist, Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark
Charles Frankel, Geologist, Planete Mars, French/US
George James, Engineer, NASA JSC, US
Christine Jayarajah, Chemist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
Jaret Matthews, Engineer, Purdue University, US
Rocky Persaud, Geologist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
Vladimir Pletser, Physicist, ESA, Belgian
Katy Quinn, Geologist, MIT, US born in Australia
Chris Shank, Engineer, USAF, US
Returning Mars Society/NASA Haughton Mars Project Members 2001
Robert Zubrin, Engineer, Pioneer Astronautics, US
Pascal Lee, Geologist, SETI Institute, French
Marc Boucher, Internet Engineer, aTerra Corp, Canada
Steve Braham, Physicist, Simon Fraser Univ., UK
Bill Clancey, Computer Scientist, NASA Ames, US
Charles Cockell, Biologist, British Antarctic Survey, UK
Jeff Jones, MD, NASA JSC, US (Tentative)
Larry Lemke, Engineer, NASA Ames, US
Darlene Lim, Biologist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
George Martin, MD, USAF, US (Tentative)
Kelly Snook, Engineer, NASA Ames, US
Frank Schubert, Architect, Largeart, US
Carol Stoker, Engineer, NASA Ames, US
Next week we will release the tentative crew rotations.
Thanks to everyone who volunteered!
For further information visit our website at
http://www.marssociety.org or contact info@marssociety.org.
