In any case, I doubt that the folks dressed up as comic, Star Trek, etc. characters would be interested in rover planning and scheduling software, Mars drilling, field-deployed wireless exploration communications, impact crater geophysics, or the current mission design reference trades for Project Constellation (the new human exploration initiative to the Moon and eventually Mars).

You'd probably be mistaken on that. Take a look at the Balticon schedule, ferinstance. Just at a glance, there are panels on "Hubble Space Telescope Update", "Today's Case for Mars. The impact of recent observations with MER data","My heroes have always been scientists and engineers", "Limitations and effects of different FTL systems on SF stories?" Programming will obviously be different between cons, but I think you'd in general find a fair amount of interest in those sorts of topics.