[SGVLUG] OT: JPL presence at Long Beach Comic Expo this weekend

[Lan Dang]

NOTE: Sorry about earlier; some key combo sent off the email before I was done.



Hi all,


I thought this might be of interest to some people in the group.  

My friend Keri told me that the Long Beach Comic Expo is this weekend, there is going to be an R2 Builder's booth there, and there will be a couple of talks by some JPL engineers.  

http://longbeachcomicexpo.com/


I'm probably going on Sunday, unless I get super-busy.


I really do not like their website and struggled to find the information I cared about.  I'm distilling it here for all of you:

TICKETS

They sell weekend passes ($50) and day passes ($30 for Sat/$25 for Sun).  If you buy them after the convention starts, I think all the prices go up by $5.
http://longbeachcomicexpo.com/tickets.php


PROGRAM SCHEDULE
http://longbeachcomiccon.com/lbce/_files/_2016/LBCE2016-ProgramOneSheet.pdf


JPL TALKS
"Dawn Mission: the Asteroids Awaken" on Saturday at 1:30pm.
The description is wrong in the program.  This is a talk about the NASA Dawn mission, which orbited Vesta and then Ceres.  I might have seen a version of this talk before--I recall a lot of Star Wars references and some cute graphics.  There may have even been a comparison of the Dawn spacecraft against a TIE fighter.


"Mars Rover Engineering: technology, troubles, and triumphs" on Sunday at 10am
This is about the design and operations of the Mars rovers and some of the challenges they have overcome.

"Mars Rover Science: Instruments, Investigations, and Images" on Sunday at 11:30am
This focuses on the scientific goals of exploring Mars, focusing more on the instruments than the rovers.  They'll explain what we've learned so far and share some cool images.


R2 BUILDERS CLUB

Even though I can't find the R2 Builders in the exhibitor listing, I am sure there will be one since she'll be manning it most of the weekend with some of the other local builders.  There will be some droids at the booth.



Lan