Submitted

7 p.m. April 11 • Deadline April 8

Want a ride to Mars? We’re going Thursday, April 11 at the monthly dinner-meeting of The English-Speaking Union, held at the Salisbury Country Club at 7 p.m.

Command Pilot for this flight is Dr. Christopher Jones, research engineer at NASA’s Research Center, Hampton, Va. Better get your seat reserved early. We’re taking the English Language to Mars.

We’re not really going this time. This is just a warm up for a trip sometime in the future. In his talk, “It’s more than Rocket Science: The Challenges of Spaceflight and Their Extraordinary Solutions,” Dr. Jones will focus on the difficult challenges we still have, such as determining a safe landing site for the pilot, crew and passengers.

Previous work of Dr. Jones includes leading development of a Venus atmospheric exploration concept, performing trajectory analysis in support of future NASA missions, and modeling in-situ resource utilization architectures for the Moon and Mars.

Dr. Jones obtained his Master’s and PhD in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech in 2009 and 2016, respectively, and his Bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina.

With firms competing to develop the first space flight rocket system, establishment of the Space Command within the Air Force, and development of the trajectory to get there, space flight is back in the news again and will be more so in the immediate future.

Reserve your seat by Monday, April 8 for this exciting trip by calling Gerry Wood at 704-216-2660 or gwood@gerrywoodauto.com. Cost of the dinner and presentation is $32/pp. and we meet at 6:30 p.m. for drinks before dinner is served at 7 p.m. I

If you are not a member of ESU you are welcome to attend this meeting to see if you would like to become a member. This is the last meeting of the current season. See www.esuus.org/salisbury to learn more.