The 47th annual meeting of the AAPG Trustee Associates, chaired in March by Dexter Harmon, proved to be a “grand” time in Galveston, Texas. Our headquarters was the historic and newly restored Grand Galvez Hotel on the equally historic seawall, where we interspersed traditional business sessions with receptions, great meals and two fascinating field trips.
Several of our newest TAs attended and added to our discussion of Foundation programs and new ideas for Foundation initiatives.
Our traditional inclusion of field trips continued with a unique visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, led by AAPG member and retired astronaut Jim Reilly, and an all-day trip on coastal depositional processes, led by Erik Scott, which took us to multiple stops on the barrier island that is home to Galveston.
Reilly served as an expert guide and featured speaker on our visit to NASA; he has had a diverse and exciting career as a petroleum geologist, astronaut (with three Space Shuttle missions), Naval Reserve officer and service as the 17th director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
In August, in a Foundation-funded event, he will be the 25th Halbouty Lecturer at IMAGE in Houston.
(In fact, there are several geoscientists past and present in the astronaut corps, including, famously, AAPG Honorary Member and multiple award-winning geoscientist Jack Schmitt, who walked on the moon in 1972 as the Apollo 17 LM pilot. Coming up, astronaut Jessica Watkins is training after six months on the ISS, and may well be the first woman on the moon in the Artemis program.)
Reilly has been a great resource for our profession, as he is the one true petroleum geologist to make the grade as an astronaut and space walker to help assemble the International Space Station. He flew to the Russian Space Station Mir on STS 98 and twice to the International Space Station on STS 104 and 117.
With AAPG, he:
- Was the featured speaker in 1998 for the Houston Geological Society’s “Take Off to the 21st Century” technical symposium, after his career changed from Enserch Exploration chief geologist to astronaut.
- Was the keynote speaker at the 2002 AAPG annual meeting’s main social event at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, dramatically describing his flight to the ISS on the STS 104 mission.
- Participated in the 2006 annual meeting’s opening session astronaut panel with Jack Schmitt and Scott Carpenter.
- Was the 2008 HGS Guest Night speaker, describing the shuttle Atlantis’ mission to the ISS on STS 117.
We were glad to welcome him back for this event and hear his views on the future of space exploration!
NASA Field Trip
Our visit to JSC included three stops on the NASA Manned Spacecraft campus in Clear Lake, Texas. The visit was facilitated by a private tram tour to transport us around the campus.
We visited the astronaut training facility building first, then had a fascinating session in the fully restored Apollo Mission Control Center – now a National Historic Site – where we experienced a nail-biting replay with original audio and video of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin pulled it off, but even in retrospect it was exciting!
Finally, we stopped at the building in “Rocket Park,” which now houses a fully assembled Saturn V rocket, over 360 feet long. The story of each Apollo mission is described in chronologically arranged displays along the length of the massive rocket. Truly awesome.
We then enjoyed a private reception and a fascinating lecture by Jim, featuring his view of the future of space exploration, and special guest Kirsten Siebach of Rice University, a self-described “Martian geologist,” actively involved in the current rover program on Mars. She and Jim interacted during his presentation. She is a past recipient of the AAPG Harrison Schmitt Award in recognition of her scientific work and participation in many AAPG events.
The evening concluded with a great catered dinner in the Starship Gallery, which is filled with fascinating displays and is adjacent to the Lunar Receiving Lab, where we touched a moon rock and saw the actual Apollo 17 command module in which Jack Schmitt travelled to and from the moon in 1972. It was incredibly compact.
Texas Coastal Processes Field Trip
The following day we enjoyed the coastal process field trip – a fascinating visit to several sites of recent and current depositional sites carefully documented by Erik Scott’s and others’ work. Scott was assisted by graduate students from Rice.
The trip began with a bus ride along the barrier island system to Follets Island, where the Brazos River reaches the Gulf. The group then systematically worked its way back to the northeast, stopping at multiple sites to hear Erik’s descriptions of depositional processes and the resulting sedimentary features.
We had lunch at San Luis Pass tidal inlet, where a state park offered us shade and a dramatic view of the water flow into the back bay area from the Gulf.
One of this field trip’s unique features was Erik’s ability to describe depositional processes with diagrams and an extensive guidebook. To the non-geoscientist’s eye, Galveston may appear geologically monotonous – but after this field trip I believe we will never forget the interesting and complex processes at work.
So, the 47th TA meeting ended after much great fellowship, networking, business updates and fun in the field!