Minutes of February Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met the McMurrays’ house in Norman, Oklahoma on February 9. We were to meet at Zio’s but discovered that we got our signals crossed and nobody reserved the room. In attendance were Clifford and Claire McMurray, Mary Creasey, Adam Hemphill, Mike Hopkins, John Northcutt, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely, Brian Swift, Steve and Karen Swift, and Syd Henderson. OSA President Clifford McMurray presided over the meeting. He also did an Update with links to the videos he presented. This can be found at http://osa.nss.org/Update1902.pdf, so I’ll cover the highlights.
This was Adam’s first meeting. He goes to the Mars Society.
We watched a video of the test of the SpaceX Raptor flight engine. They will be creating Starhopper and have 21 flights scheduled for 2019. “Starship” is the name of the upper part of the rocket.
The Dragon capsule will have two crew members for the test flight and carry seven people when in full service.
We watched a video of the SpaceShipTwo launch,
Astronaut wings for the SpaceShipTwo crew members (and presumably future customers of SpaceX) have “Commercial Space Transportation” on them.
Kip (Clifford) mentioned that these suborbital companies are going to make a great deal of their money by flying experiments.
We watched a video of a January 23 launch on New Shepard. It was the fourth flight for this launch vehicle.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been operating since 2009. It recently photographed the Chang’e 4 lander (but couldn’t see the rover). We watched a video of Chang’e 4 landing on the Moon.
Chris Hadfield is doing online masterclasses on Space Exploration.
We watched a video of how to take space debris out of orbit.
We watched a video of the damage to the Columbus module of the ISS.
We watched a video about NASA cybersecurity threats during the government shutdown. NASA is the most attacked agency in the federal government.
We watched an ad of Mark Watley (Matt Damon) for Under Armor
Business:
Our annual report to the NSS is due of February 15 of each year. Syd does the report of chapter activities and made some corrections at the meeting. Among other things were a world space week talk on October 8.
Kip will not be able to attend Soonercon. Syd will try to do some panels.
We have $963.95 in checking account and $267 in cash for a total of $1230.95.
The NSS website has changed to https://space.nss.org. We visited the new site.
We watched a Mars Society debate on the proposed Lunar Gateway launch platform at the Earth-Moon L1 point. (That’s the one between the Earth and the Moon.) John Mankins took the affirmative side and Robert Zubrin the negative. Zubrin appeared to have the better of the debate.
--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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