Notes on July Event
Oklahoma Space Alliance did not have a July meeting. Instead, we had an early Space Week event: a trip to and tour of the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas. Travelling were Mike Hopkins, Tom Koszoru, Clifford McMurray, John Northcutt, Dave Sheely, Brian Swift, Steve and Karen Swift , Stephanie Thibodeau and Syd Henderson, and Brent. Dave St. John, who lives in Wichita, met us at the Cosmosphere. From Norman, the trip to the Cosmosphere takes about three hours, and we went in three cars, two from Norman and the Swifts and Stephanie from Oklahoma City. We ate when we arrived in Hutchinson then spent the entire afternoon at the museum. The museum Omnimax theatre (like an Imax except it’s a dome, which distorts images) was showing Space Next, a documentary on the past and future of human spaceflight.
The Museum is probably best known for its history of spaceflight exhibit, which follows a timeline from German space efforts (including actual V1 and V2 rockets) through the Apollo era (including the Apollo 13 command module and an Apollo moon rock. The Liberty Bell 7, Gus Grissom’s Mercury capsule, which was restored by the Cosmosphere, was on loan to the Children’s museum of Indianapolis. However, the main hall features one of the Apollo 11’s Saturn V’s engines, the worse for wear since it had been sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic for almost 50 years when Jeff Bezos and company rescued it. An unflown Saturn V engine sits outside the front of the Cosmosphere. Mike Hopkins and I attended Dr. Goddard’s Lab, which introduced us to some of the concepts of space flight, such as using liquid oxygen to make things burn really, really fast.
--Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
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