Minutes of September Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met the McMurrays’ house in Norman, Oklahoma on September 13. In attendance were Clifford and Claire McMurray, Adam Hemphill, Mike Hopkins, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely, Steve Swift, Brian 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/Update1909.pdf, so I’ll cover the highlights.
We watched a Linkspace video of a test launch of a Chinese commercial launch, then a video of the semi-commercial launch of Smart Dragon-1, which launched three satellites to low-Earth orbit
We watched a video on ArianeSpace’s reusable launcher, the Themis. This is being developed by ArianeWorks, which is sort of the ESU version of “Skunk Works.” CNES and ArianeSpace are creating the Prometheus engine which uses methane and oxygen and will be used aboard Themis.
We watched a video of the fourth and last Starhopper test flight. Starhopper has one Raptor engine. Starship will have at least three.
We watched a video on Virgin Galactic.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and China are all establishing their own space resources policies.
We watched a video on the Chandrayaan 2 landing. The lander lost contact before landing (or crashing), but the orbiter will last seven years.
TESS has discovered an exoplanetary system which has a hot Earth-sized and two mini-Neptunes. It’s not clear how such a planetary system could have formed.
Kip: They’re finding an awful lot more lava tubes on the Moon.
Business meeting:
We have $655.36 in checking account and $267 in cash, for a total of $922.36. (This was before I have Tim a check from a new membership.)
Kip went to the Tripoli LDRS meeting. Kip thinks it’s the most amazing space-related experience he’s had except for meeting Neil Armstrong. Someone did a full-scale V-2 replica and someone else a 1/10 scale Saturn V replica. (These were flown in previous years.) The LDRS event is held every Labor Day weekend at the Argonia, Kansas, Rocket Pasture.
During the exploration of the Northwest Passage, privately funded explorers did better than the government sponsored ones.
We watched a video the acceptance speech of Jeffrey Manber, the CEO and co-founder of NanoRacks receiving the NSS Space Entrepreneur award at ISDC. He had a video about terpenes in microgravity. These occur in whiskeys and wines. Aging a beverage in microgravity for two years is equivalent to doing it for five years on Earth.
In 2009, NanoRacks entered a contract to increase the exploitation of the ISS. NanoRacks has been on 35 launches, with 750 payloads, including 230 satellites deployed.
Should we have a display for the opening of the movie Ad Astra, since it uses the name of the NSS magazine? [Apparently not.]
--Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
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