Minutes of February Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met February 9, 2013 at the Denny’s on the I-240 access road on the north side just east of Pennsylvania Avenue in southern Oklahoma City. Attending were Steve, Karen and Brian Swift, Don Robinson, Linda Shannon, Dave Sheely, Tim Scott and Syd Henderson.
Steve sent a letter to state legislators and government officials. He got three responses, including one from Governor Fallin’s science secretary.
Celebration of Human Space Flight (Yuri’s Night). Claire wants to head or find someone else to head. We can hold it at Embassy Suites on Meridian for $200 and have a cash bar, or at Marriott Gardens for $200 with no food brought in.
Topics for Meetings:
Plans for Mars. What different companies want to do.
Plans for the Moon.
Deep Space.
Asteroids.
Potential uses for L1 and L2.
Commercialization of Space, including Oklahoma businesses.
Crew vehicles and boosters.
Near zero energy paths in space.
What’s Happening in Space:
Quote: “There are those among us who will not be daunted or denied a better future or an ultimate destiny among the stars.”--Ralph Waldo Emerson
NASA will test the Bigelow expandable module on the International Space Station. The module will be launched on the 8th SpaceX cargo resupply mission in 2015. For more information, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSMdktpTDQQ.
We viewed a zoomable image of the entire earth at night from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the day. It can be found at: apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1212/dnb_land_ocean_ice.2012.3600x1800.jpg.
Carbon Planets Turn Earth’s Chemistry on Its Head: 55 Cancri e may have a crust of graphite over a layer of diamond.
We watched a tour of the interior of Endeavour.
Deep Space Industries is a privately-held American company in the asteroid mining business. They hope to offer commercial services as soon as 2016. Initially, their probes will hitch rides on other missions. We watched a promo video, as well as a video for their rival, Planetary Resources. [There’s an article on this in the May issue of Analog.—Syd]
Azerspace/AfricaSat was successfully launched into space on February 7, via an Ariane 5. This is Azerbaijan’s first commercial satellite and was constructed for them by Orbital Sciences. You can see the launch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfpVqRRjLjQ. [There is also a commemorative postage stamp: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerspace.] The 10,317 kg payload to geosynchronous orbit (which also included the Amazonas 3 satellite) is a record.
An asteroid will pass within 17,100 miles of the Earth’s surface in February.
Kepler Data Suggest that Earth-size Planets May Be Right Next Door. See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-048. Up to 6% of red dwarfs, the most common type of star, may have planets in their habitable zone.
South Korea launched a rocket that put a satellite in orbit.
Our feature presentation was a tour of the International Space Station by Suni Williams.
We then went quickly through Milestones 8 - 12 of NSS’s roadmap to space.
[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.
Copyright �2013 Oklahoma Space Alliance.
