MINUTES

The next meeting of MAST will be announced soon. See our Meetings page for details.

Meeting minutes up to three months old will be posted on this page.  To read archived minutes from earlier meetings, click here.

August 18, 2019, 12:00pm
Nassau Bay Hilton

Attendance:

• Bebe Kelly-Serrato
• Stacy Clifford
• Rob Alexander
• John DiIorio
• Vito Manfredi
• Linda Roehrborn (via Phone)
• Angela Beck

Business:

• John: Briefing on Houston Spaceport project, accelerating opening date of spaceport, fundraising efforts in Congress, additional items that need to be finished to advance the project
• Introductions of members present
  • Item: Get updated bios from everyone for website (also professional head shots too)
• President's vision: Get MAST back in action, develop new leadership to avoid being "president for life," let officers take initiative in generating activities
• Officer needs: Chief Financial Director (Bebe has a candidate in mind)
• Membership dues discussion:
  • Need to file 501c3
  • Need to show members what we're doing with the money
  • Motion to charge $50/yr. for professional membership effective Sept. 1, 2019 - PASSED
  • Motion to charge $25/yr. for student/retired membership effective Sept. 1, 2019 - PASSED
• Nomination of Angela Beck for Media & Public Relations Director - PASSED
• Reminder to observe and honor and enforce Code of Ethics for all members

Open Discussion:

• John: Gave more info on his mini-movies and how MAST can use them; suggested holding presentations at Comicpalooza
• Angela: Do presentations at Discovery Green, attract younger members
• John: Suggested holding lunch & learns, participating in ATS Conference
• Linda: Would like to create a Moon base competition, could get speakers from the Air Force for MAST events
• Rob: Will MAST be Houston-based, or grow beyond?
  • Bebe: Can do online speaker events, have had offers to start chapters in other cities, but feels we are not ready for that yet
• John: Need to have regular meetings/speakers with small fee to feed treasury; corporate sponsorships are harder to get these days
• Idea: MAST technology summit - can charge for tables, sponsorships, ads in programs/literature
• What's our first event?
  • Basic speaker event, "rubber chicken dinner," possibly at Hilton
  • Proposed date in first week of November
  • Several suggestions for speaker
  • Motion to have John and Angela move ahead with organizing event - PASSED
• John volunteers as Acting Membership Director until after next event
• Reciprocity at meetings:
  • Discussion of mutual agreement with other orgs to attend each other's meetings
  • Linda offers partnership with Untethered Exploration - tabled for now
• BeBe requested a written proposal request for partnership signed by Linda for the BOD to consider
• Stacy: Suggested lining up additional speakers in advance to give potential members something to look forward to (an announcement for future speakers at the Nov. event is highly desired)
• Vito: Suggested CEOs of small space startups as potential speakers
  • BeBe added that those CEOs could also be sponsors of MAST for a platform for nonprofit pet technology projects
• John: Need membership forms; suggested offering gift bags for new members (T-shirt, koozies, etc.) - spurred additional discussion on T-shirt design & cost
  • Item: Send logo files to Rob Alexander

Adjourned at 2:20pm

Sept 20, 2015
Chelsea's Wine Bar

Officers in Attendance:

President/Managing Director - BeBe Kelly-Serrato
Legal Director - Clay Rawlings
STEM Director - Linda Roehrborn (on phone line dialed in)
Aerospace Liaison Director - Rob Alexander
Mars Society Liaison/Visiting Member - Carl Carlsson

Officers Unable to Attend:

Webmaster - Stacy Clifford
AIAA Liaison - Alan Sisson

Invited Guests:

Political Advisor - Wayne Rast (could not attend due to short notice)

Actions:

• Acceptance of minutes from May 2015 meeting by motion from Rob passed by Clay & BeBe; a discussion followed to write the bank process for adding a new person to the account as a necessary item to the bylaws. Currently Stacy Clifford and BeBe Kelly-Serrato have a credit card to the account.
• Add process to bylaws and add vote to buy anything to bylaws - BeBe & Stacy to review the addition.

New Business for Sept 20th, 2015:

• Carl Carlsson was introduced as the former president of Mars Society of Houston and one of our original Mars Society of Houston Officers. He provided a short summary of his impressions of the Mars 18th National Conference Mars Society in DC. The following was stated:
  • Typical Mars Conference in terms of attendance and presentations, with an added emphasis on flyby missions.
  • The Mars flyby by Tito - Carl's impression was that it couldn't happen by 2018 & would probably never happen, but that a Mars flyby is the best type of mission to advocate because:
    • it will be an inspirational achievement;
    • it can be accomplished within an 8 year presidential cycle, and within NASA's current budget;
    • it will address most of the key concerns raised in opposition to Mars missions (psychological factors, life support, chemical propulsion, radiation exposure, etc.) at a much lower cost than a surface mission.
  • The Mars Society has officially shifted their position, and has announced a contest for 10 different missions for the fly-by to demonstrate feasibility and present this to all the presidential candidates as a worthwhile mission.
  • Carl questions whether NASA culture is too bureaucratic and risk averse to carry out such a mission; at the MS conference Harrison Schmitt proposed creating a new, younger, and bolder agency to carry out future manned missions.
  • Discussed the Andy Weir Skype call - he doesn't fly!!!!???
  • Discussed possible leadership change for MARS One, as they don't appear to have it together; it was Carl's opinion that they sounded lost; the MS Convention debated with the MIT students who criticized their mission plan.
  • Carl would be willing to participate in legislative/candidate visits.
• Wayne Rast did not make our meeting but BeBe explained why she invited him. There had been a mayoral discussion about the Houston Spaceport and it would have been beneficial to know the facts. Carl made a comment as to if MAST had plans to advocate a candidate to which a resounding NO was the answer. MAST has no plans for advocation of any candidates, but we want to know how they impact the space environment.
• BeBe has an Action to get all paper work for tax year 2014 to the registered tax agent and will do this before the end of this month. It has to be filed before Oct 15th.
• BeBe explained to the officers that Angela Beck was sent an email and BeBe received a reply from her that she is busy until after the holidays; she will know afterwards if she can provide support for MAST.

TBA

Meeting adjourned.

Open forum discussion during dinner - free brainstorming (we did not take notes during the social time).

Officers in Attendance:

President/Managing Director - BeBe Kelly-Serrato
Webmaster - Stacy Clifford
Legal Director - Clay Rawlings
Media Director - Nich Smith
Aerospace Liaison Director - Rob Alexander

Agenda:

• Discuss who should be signatories on the group credit union account - BeBe, Rob, DeeDee, Stacy as candidates.
• Nominate DeeDee for Treasurer.
• Nominate Angela Beck to replace Nich Smith as Media Director.
• After the credit union account is set up, apply for non-profit status.

• Motion to removed Nich Smith as Media Director because he is moving to Nevada - Passed.
• Motion to nominate Angela Beck to replace Nich Smith as Media Director - Passed.
• Discussion - completion of 501c3 paperwork.
• Call for signatories on credit union account:
  • Vote required on all spending.
  • Spending to be done only by person in charge of the event.
  • Decision to have BeBe and Stacy as signatories to start; additional signatories may be added later.

TBA

Adjourned at 3:00 pm

• Request other officers to review previous meeting minutes and amend or approve.
• Amegy Bank chosen to open bank account, discussion of filing fees for non-profit status.
• Ideas for holiday social: Anita Gale boat parade party on Dec.13 in Clear Lake, group viewing of the movie "Interstellar," dinner gathering at a restaurant.
• Agreed to support Mars Rover Celebration Mockup Contest, call for volunteers.
• BeBe reviews VASIMR presentation from Nov. 13 at AIAA lunch.
• Submission of Stacy's paper to LPSC, questions about format and procedure; session proposal probably not accepted (no answer).

• BeBe - Open bank account, contact LPSC for additional info, notify Anita Gale of interest in holiday party.
• Stacy - Post info about Mars Rover contest on website.

Officers in Attendance:

Secretary - Crystabelle Rodriguez
Legal Director - Clay Rawlings
Media Director - Nich Smith
Aerospace Liaison Director - Rob Alexander
STEM Director - Linda Roerhborn
President/Managing Director - BeBe Kelly-Serrato

Agenda:

• Bylaws and Code of Ethics to tie down (Core Values): 30 – 40 minutes: Mostly written, need to complete and send out for edits to those officers who agree to apply more edits. For the Code of Ethics, a few questions to ask as to what we want to include: Four Values? Responsibility / Respect / (Kindness or Compassion )/ and finally (Integrity or Honesty). Discuss how to frame these in the document, the last two Kindness & Compassion are similar and so is Integrity & Honesty, but there are differences. Need input on which core value to frame and how the rest of the team views these values within their reality.
• Creation of the Organization Chart and duties of Executive Council: 20 minutes (Assign a responsible party to create the org chart and send to Stacy Clifford to post on our website.)
• A hard start date for our Registered Tax Agent Volunteer Treasurer for filing our non-profit paper work: 10 minutes.
• Social time: However long we all what to stay and enjoy the afternoon.

• Code of Ethics (COE): Adopted the core values of Responsibility, Respect, Integrity, & Compassion; Clay Rawlings suggested adding Civility; after discussion, all agreed to add this to the list of core values.
• Discussed the Bylaws and both documents are loaded on Google Docs and a share link has been sent to all officers and all have full editing rights.
• Date of Jan 15th as a final date for all edits to the Bylaws to be completed.
• Agreed to open the bank account with $200.00 in seed funds which were supplied by Mr. Clay Rawlings.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - Virtual meeting online/phone

Adjourned at ?

Attendance:

Bebe Kelly-Serrato
Stacy Clifford
Clay Rawlings
Shen Ge
Alan Sisson

Schedule:

• 6:00pm-9:00pm: Attended dinner with guest speaker and lunar astronaut Alan Bean at Gilruth Center.
• 9:30pm: Relocated to Chelsea Wine Bar for discussion.

• Introductions.
  Overview of MAST for new members, discussion of structure and selection of officers.
• Submission of Stacy Clifford's paper on spacefaring to the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference.
• Clay Rawlings: extensive discussion of publishing, media outreach, futurism, esoterica.

Next meeting:

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Adjourned at 1:00am.

August 26, 2014, 7:30pm
Web/Phone Conference

Attendance:

Bebe Kelly-Serrato
Stacy Clifford
Nicholas Smith
Linda Roerhborn

Discussion:

• Linda's concerns regarding the title of the new organization; alternate suggestions.
• BeBe reads proposed founding statement for MAST.
• Reasons for the name MAST; reaffirmation of acceptance of the name.
• Discussion of the resignation letter to Dr. Zubrin.
• Assigned task to Nich to formulate statement of the reasons for leaving the Mars Society.
• Agreed to give Stacy access to MailChimp account to serve as editor.
• Agreed that MAST desires to support a broader set of exploration options than just Mars Direct.
• Discussion of bylaws and core values - Mars Society bylaws are too focused on Mars Direct, not appropriate as a template.
• Steps for registering as a business and a non-profit.
• Request for officer job descriptions.
• Long term need for an officer to serve as project manager for research projects.
• Assigned project to Linda to define requirements for STEM logo contest.
• Agreed to hold online officers meetings on the last Tuesday of each month.
• Suggestions for town hall meeting locations - Rice U., UH, HMNS, Anita Gale's house.

Next meeting:

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Adjourned at 8:30pm.

July 11, 2014, 7:00pm
Mars Taco Meeting, West Houston Residence

Attendance:

Bebe Kelly-Serrato
Stacy Clifford
Nicholas Smith

Discussion:

• Current state of Mars Society of Houston, relationship to national Mars Society, Franklin Chang-Diaz incident.
• Proposal to separate from the Mars Society and form an independent local organization in Houston.
• Discussion of new organization goals & logistics:
  • What is its purpose?
  • What is there for members to do (activities to participate in)?
  • Scope: Local, regional, national?
  • Long term goals: Research, political outreach, education?
  • Possible projects: Cave rover technology competition, lava tube habitat analog, propulsion research.
• Vote taken to form new organization: all in favor.
• Brainstorming of possible names: settled on Mars Astronautics Space Technologies (MAST).

Next meeting:

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Adjourned at 12:00am.