Minutes of April Meeting
National Space Society’s Oklahoma Space Alliance chapter held its regular monthly Meeting on April 14, 2018 at Earl’s Rib Palace in Moore, Oklahoma. Attending were OSA President David Sheely, Russ Davoren, Syd Henderson, Mike Hopkins, Clifford McMurray, Eleanor Powell, Tim Scott, Brian Swift, Steve and Karen Swift. David presided over the meeting.
David did an Update last month that is online at http://osa.nss.org/index.html and contains links to his presentations, so I’ll go over the highlights and videos.
We watched a video of the launch of SpaceShipTwo Unity. This was the first flight of a SpaceShipTwo since VSS Enterprise broke up on a test flight in October 2014, killing a pilot. I speculated whether the three and a half year delay may put Virgin Galactic at a disadvantage compared to other space tourism companies that are near launch.
We watched a video of a SpaceX launch to the ISS, and one of Ariane 5’s return to action after a telemetry problem on a launch in January.
We watched a Trump video in which he was calling for the creation of a Space Force.
We watched an HBO video on Bob Walker, who is the President’s space policy advisor. Walker is also a former congressman from Pennsylvania, serving from 1977 to 1997, and was Chair of the House Science Committee during his last term in office. Walker doesn’t think NASA should be monitoring climate change, but that the monitoring should be transferred to a different agency such as NOAA. [NASA is an independent agency while NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce. On the other hand, NOAA already does quite a bit of monitoring of the atmosphere and oceans.]
We watched a video of SpaceX launching ten communications satellites on one flight, for the Iridium satellite constellation. [I have more on this in Space News.] We also watched the landing of the first stage. There will be eight SpaceX launches in total, at least under this contract.
Kip: Time delay for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit is about 0.2 seconds. [Which explains why the constellation orbits about 500 miles up instead of 26,000.]
It can cost a couple of hundred dollars to transport a gallon of gasoline to a forward military position, so beaming power could be an incredible savings.
Watched video of launch of a communications satellite from India.
Watched a video of the Soyuz MS-08 launch.
Watched a virtual tour of the Moon from images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. You can watch this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr5Pj6GQL2o or https://www.space.com/40274-nasa-moon-in-4k-video-tour.html (with narration), and many other places.
After reimbursing Syd for Outreach and paying for our mailbox, we have $1033.75 in the checking account and $267 in cash for a total of $1370.75.
Dave attends NSS All-Chapters meetings online.
We watched a video of Vice-President Pence at Kennedy Space Center as a keynote for the second meeting of the National Space Council.
We also watched a video on the State of NASA’s Goals by acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot.
Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
--Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
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