Minutes of July meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met at the Koszoru house on July 17.
Attending were Tom and Heidi Koszoru, John Northcutt and Syd Henderson. We also communicated with Claire McMurray and Tim Scott by telephone for voting purposes.
Several of our members have frequent conflicts which make it difficult to get to meetings on the third Saturday of the month. Claire requested that we change to a different weekend of the month, and the one with the fewest conflicts is the second Saturday. This passed unanimously, including phone votes from Claire and Tim, who were two of the members who had conflicts. Thus the August meeting will be on the 14th.
Note that OSIDA meets on the second Wednesday of the month, which follows the second Saturday three months out of seven, so many OSIDA updates will have to appear in the newspaper for the following month. This already happens when the OSIDA meeting happens the Wednesday before a meeting and it’s a month when Outreach is mailed, since that has to go out before Wednesday afternoon. It will now happen a lot more often.
Syd, to his surprise, found himself in possession the money from the “Tom Doesn’t Sing Fund” from the 2004 ISDC. It amounted to $195 for this good cause, plus a $100 check which was never cashed and has expired. Tom thinks the money should go to the Foundry, assuming that still exists. The Foundry goes (or went) through the Huntsville NSS chapter, which is hosted the 2011 International Space Development Conference.
Claire found the clipboard with the signup sheet from SoonerCon. This added eight people to the mailing list, and several to the e-mail list, of which four addresses bounced.
The University of South Dakota has classes on grant funding.
Tom Stafford’s daughter likes the idea of having Yuri’s Night at the Stafford Museum.
Can an OU professor assign promotion of the Oklahoma Spaceport as a class project? We also need to check with OSIDA to see if such promotion is kosher.
We voted to support Starbase through personal donations. Tom donated $20. Syd will donate at the next meeting. Do we need to get the money to Tim? We’re pledged to donate $100 which a fraction of the actual cost.
Rocketplane Limited and its daughter companies, Rocketplane Kistler and Global Rocketplane, have declared bankruptcy. This ends the Pioneer Rocketplane saga. It received millions of dollars in tax breaks from the Oklahoma legislature to launch space tourists from the Oklahoma Spaceport. Rocketplane Limited (the family tree is complicated) left Oklahoma in February 2009 and never launched a thing.
August OSIDA Meeting
The August meeting of the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority has been canceled. The next meeting is September 8.
Report on July 14 OSIDA Meeting
The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority met on July 14 at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation Building. Board members present were new chairman Jack Bonny, Gilmer Capps, Lou Sims, Cal Hobson, Ken McGill and Joe King. There were six in the audience.
The security fence at the Oklahoma Spaceport was completed about a week before the meeting. Since then there have been two incidents of cars crashing into the fence, one by the highway patrol. There was $2600 worth of damage done.
Armadillo Aerospace has requested from the FAA permission to fly up to 50,000 feet. FAA wants a radius where the vehicle could possible land. Armadillo would fly under regulations from the Office of Commercial Space.
Leftover FAA money from PAPI (Precision Approach Path Indicators) can be used at the Oklahoma Airport in Elk City if that is okay. This money has to go to an FAA program so it can’t go to the Spaceport.
Bill Khourie was designated to go to a meeting with the Starbase people.
--Submitted by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright �2010 Oklahoma Space Alliance.