General Chairs: Daniel J. Scheeres (AAS), Bobby G. Williams (AIAA)

Technical Chairs: Louis A. D’Amario (AAS), Les Sackett (AIAA)

The 11^th annual Spaceflight Mechanics meeting was held at the Radisson Hotel Santa Barbara from February 11-15, 2001. The meeting proceeded with no obvious hitches and the vast majority of feedback received was favorable. The hotel and staff were very cooperative and helped to make the conference a success. This report provides a summary of the conference.

Attendance: The total number of attendees at the conference was 191. Of these, 107 registered at the member’s rate, 51 registered at the non-members rate, 29 registered at the student rate, and 4 were given free access (panel members). A total of 49 registrants were international, representing over 25% of the attendees. Hotel reservations were as follows: Friday 2/9 — 2, Saturday 2/10 — 21, Sunday 2/11 — 118, Monday 2/12 — 140, Tuesday 2/13 — 146, Wednesday 2/14 — 126, Thursday 2/15 — 40, Friday 2/16 — 1, Saturday 2/17 — 1.

Papers and presentations: Three concurrent technical sessions were held each morning and afternoon on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for a total of 24 sessions. A total of 129 papers were presented at the conference. Originally there were 155 submissions, of which 4 were rejected, leaving 151 accepted papers. Of these, 11 were withdrawn prior to printing the program, 3 were withdrawn after printing the program, and 8 were withdrawn (or were no-shows) at the conference. A total of 1943 papers were sold during the conference, indicating continued strong demand for hard-copy papers to be present. A total of 33 copies of the proceeding were also pre-ordered.

Special events: There were a total of 3 receptions at the conference, one plenary talk, and one special panel. On Sunday the 11^th, an early-bird reception was held at the hotel. On Monday the 12^th, a large welcoming reception was held following the plenary talk given by Dr. Malcolm Shuster. On Tuesday the 13^th, a special panel was convened to discuss the current state of human space exploration and exobiology in light of Arthur C. Clarke’s book 2001: A Space Odyssey. Following the panel a light reception was held.

Lessons learned:

1. We were fortunate that the hotel was cooperative with regards to government rates and other issues, and that the conference room size was sufficient (barely), as there were no other possibilities in town. Next time it would be good to first canvass a few different locations before settling on a single city (as has been done more recently).
2. Better coordination and planning are needed for computer projectors. Several last minute requests surfaced, and these will only become more common in the future. As rental costs are exorbitant ($450/day in Santa Barbara, which we did not use), purchase options should be discussed at least.

Submitted by Dan Scheeres, 7/11/01