Day 9 - Nervous and Anxious

Today was somewhat stressful as I didn't feel that I was as well-prepared for my afternoon talk as I should have been. Got up early morning to finalize my briefing, and then took the 7:30 bus that the conference organizers had arranged to go from Villa Merced to ESRIN (the European Space Agency site in Frascati where the conference is being held). Getting into the facility was even harder than getting into NASA, which says something about inefficiency.

The morning sessions were good, but I focused on editing my briefing and practicing. Later in the morning, an asteroid impact exercise was announced, and while it seemed really interesting, I remained focused on my session. But the exercise itself was super interesting - basically there is a 140-400 m asteroid coming our way, we don't know precisely when, we don't know precisely where, but we know it's on its way. What do we do? It's a multiday exercise with each day representing multiple months or years and things changing rapidly. Here are some details http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/nda.php.

We also got some nice toys to play with. Nerds like toys like this: https://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/. I had hours of fun designing an asteroid strike that would cause the minimum amount of damage. And an asteroid deflection mission. Sadly one can't control nature, and we have to react to

whatever the solar system gives us.

In the break, I hung out with some celebrities in the nerd-dom - Tom Jones, a former astronaut (http://www.astronauttomjones.com/#!tom-jones-biography/c1z79) and Amy Mainzer, who might be, after Neil deGrasse Tyson, the world's best known astronomer and asteroid hunter. I have known her from a couple Discovery specials on asteroid strikes.

Anyway, my presentation went well and was well received. And I could relax. In the evening, there was a nice reception, and I decided that we should walk back rather than take the bus. It wasn't a very picturesque walk (except for one part, see picture) but the walk was almost all uphill, so that's good - I have now been eating bread and pasta and dessert all day long for two week and God knows I can use a leisurely 30 min walk a day.