Oklahoma Space Alliance

OKLAHOMA SPACE ALLIANCE

A Chapter of the National Space Society

Who We Are:

        Oklahoma Space Alliance is the central Oklahoma Chapter of the National Space Society, one of the largest space advocacy groups in the country, and has existed for more than 20 years. Our purposes include promoting the exploration and development of space, educating the public to current events in space and the usefulness of an active space program, all with the intent of promoting a space-faring civilization.
        Oklahoma Space Alliance hosted the 23^rd Annual International Space Development Conference on May 27-31, 2004. We previously hosted three Regional Space Development Conferences, assisted with earlier ISDCs, put displays in malls, hosted lectures, sponsored television interviews, hosted viewing nights, worked with other space-oriented groups and maintained local contact with the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority.
        Oklahoma Space Alliance helped out with the 2007 International Space Development Conference which was hosted by the National Space Society of North Texas in Dallas Texas from May 24 - 28, 2007, and put together a commemorative exhibit for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. This exhibit ran through July of 2009. (See below for details.)
        We do a bimonthly newsletter called Outreach and a monthly e-mail newsletterUpdate to keep our members informed of current developments in space and upcoming events they might be interested in. Editor of Outreach is Syd Henderson and editor of Update is C;ifford McMurray. Clifford also does an Update most months when Outreach is published.

Oklahoma Space Alliance is now on Facebook at Oklahoma Space Alliance

July 2026 Update (pdf format) (Information to be presented at July meeting)

July 2026 Outreach (pdf format)

Space Priorities (pdf format)

Outreach & Update

Outreach and Update are the newsletters of Oklahoma Space Alliance. Outreach is published in odd-numbered months and is sent both by post and by e-mail.Update is published in even-number months and is sent by e-mail. The December Update is often replaced by a meeting announcement election ballot, in which case the November minutes will be published in the January Outreach. You must be a member of Oklahoma Space Alliance to receive Outreach by post unless you are on our courtesy list. To receive newsletters by e-mail, contact Syd Henderson at the address at the bottom of the page. The newsletters listed below are slightly edited to turn them into web pages.
Outreach is edited by Syd Henderson, and Update by Clifford McMurray (except the June 2024 was by Adam Hemphill)

July Meeting

Oklahoma Space Alliance will meet at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, at the location next to Norman Computers on West Main in Norman. Prospective members are welcome.
The meeting room is in the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge next to Norman Computers. Please enter through the Cyber Hall door. The Cyber Hall is at 914 W Main St, opposite Norman High School. The phone number is (405) 292-9501. To get to the meeting space from points north, take Highway 77 exit off I-35, and continue south until you reach Main Street. Norman Computers is about a block and a half west of this on the south (left) side of a small mall.

Saturday, July 11, 2:00 p.m.

Introductions and review of Space events this past month
What’s Happening in Space, News, Pictures, and Videos approximately one hour. See http://osa.nss.org before the meeting for items to be discussed.
Break
Oklahoma Space Alliance Chapter Business Discussion

Review OSA treasurer’s report.
Minutes of May and June Meeting
Plans for 2026
ISDC 2026

Video (to be announced)
Chat

Minutes of June 13 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting

        Oklahoma Space Alliance met June 13, 2026, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Adam Hemphill, Mark Deaver, Clifford McMurray, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely and Syd Henderson. Instead of our usual presentation of space news, Adam did a presentation on the viability of Data Centers in space. This meant there was no June Update.
        Adam’s major presentation was Scott Manley’s YouTube presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQYU3m1e80&t=27s (also available at https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1rxec49/is_it_really_impossible_to_cool_a_datacenter_in/ )
        The problem is that cooling involves heat transfer, which can be done by conduction, convection and radiation. Conduction and convection do not work in a vacuum, so to cool the data center (which produces large amounts of heat) you need radiators of some type to have the surface area to radiate heat from the data center. You do have to pump heat from the data center to the radiators, which you can do if the radiators are cooler than the data center. But loss of heat by radiation is much more efficient at high temperatures , while data centers will not work at high temperatures.
        Thus, you need a large surface area for the radiators, but you also have to be careful not to expose too much of their surface area to the sun. You will have to put them edge-on to the Sun while the solar panels are face on to the Sun, supplying the energy to run the data center. Of course, that energy is what is converted to the heat you’re trying to get rid of.
        In addition, the spacecraft will be getting thermal radiation from the Earth, both through reflection from the Earth’s surface (during the day) and the Earth's own thermal radiation. For a spacecraft directly between the Earth and the Sun, this can amount to a third of the radiation from the Sun.
        Manley does the rough calculations for a satellite that uses 20 kW of powers and it’s tricky but probably doable, but Musk is talking about 100 kW servers and that’s trickier, because we are talking about drastically increasing the size of the solar panels, hence also of the radiator panels. He calculates you will have to move 70 liters of water to the radiator panels per minute to remove 100 kW of heat, which means you are using extra energy to pump the coolant. Water is not the ideal coolant for this because it expands when it cools. (The ISS uses ammonia, which has its own problems, while the Russians use glycol).
        We also watched a video with Elon Musk on this and also his proposed giant Tesla facility.
        Kip went to the ISDC and did some reports, including on the UCF (University of Central Florida) Space Ideation Challenge. For more information, see https://business.ucf.edu/space-ideation-challenge/.
Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson

By the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, which says that thermal radiation increases as the fourth power of temperature in degrees Kelvin. This, incidentally, is also how you can work out the size of a star from its temperature and luminosity.

Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson

July 2026 Update (pdf format) (Information to be presented at July meeting)

July 2026 Outreach (pdf format)

Minutes of January 2026 Meeting
Minutes of February 2026 Meeting
Minutes of March 2026 Meeting
Minutes of April 2026 Meeting
Minutes of May 2026 Meeting
Minutes of June 2026 Meeting

Minutes of previous meetings

Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Clifford McMurray
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright 2026 Oklahoma Space Alliance.