Minutes of May Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met May 11, 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, Dave and Ramona Chamberlain, Gerald Taylor, David Sheeley, Gig Parker and Syd Henderson.
Note: with the May meeting, we moved the “What’s happening” portion of the meeting to before the business meeting.
What’s Happening:
Quote of the month: “The lands that we see are truly unpopulated. They are waiting for the gift of life.”—Jeff Greason.
We watched a video of Orbital Services’ April 21 launch of its Antares Rocket. There will be a demonstration run to the Space Station by the Cygnus capsule within the coming months. Video is available at www.space.com.
We watched a low altitude video of the surface of the Moon by the GRAIL spacecraft shortly before impact.
We watched the video by astronaut Chris Hadfield of what happens when you wring out a washcloth in space. What happens is the water clings to the washcloth and gradually creeps up your hands. Video is at www.space.com, which has links to Hadfield’s other space videos. We also watched his video on how to steer the space station.
We watched a video of SpaceX’s 250-meter test of its Grasshopper spacecraft. This spacecraft is designed for vertical takeoff and landing.
Planetary Resources is planning to launch tiny satellites in early 2014.
Mars One has opened application for settlers on Mars. They have 40,000 applicants from which 24 will be selected.
We watched a video of a Progress launch to the Space Station.
Virgin Galactic broke the sound barrier in its first flight of SpaceShipTwo. Maximum height was 55,000 feet. Video is at space.com. SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket engines were developed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
Virgin Galactic also can use its flying launch platform (that thing that looks like a Siamese twin airplane) to launch rockets.
We watched a video of the European Space Agency’s second Vega launch. Vega is capable of launching 1500 kg into low Earth orbit.
Buzz Aldrin says US must colonize Mars.
The first mother in space was Anna Lee Fisher. (Note: all Chinese women astronauts must be married and already have a child. This may be due to the one child policy: they don’t want to ruin a woman’s only chance to have a child by exposing her to space radiation.)
We watched videos on Space Ventures’ and Planetary Resources’ asteroid mining, Mars One, and the Luna XPrize.
NASA has contracted with Bigelow to attach one of their expandable modules. Two of these were launched in 2006 and 2007, respectively.
Business Meeting:
Steve Swift went to the May 8 OSIDA meeting.
The new Operations Control Center is finished except for touchup.
At the Unmanned Aerial System Seminar, Raytheon was a participant and expressed an interest in weather and experiments.
The decrepit warehouses still are not torn down.
Boeing has a facility in Tulsa where they do interiors for 747s. They brought 100 people to Burns Flat for testing.
Steve would like to have a work session to identify a list of technologies pertaining to space.
Dave attended the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. This is for sophomores in engineering, and there were about 9000 participants. For information on this, see http://spaceappschallenge.org/.
Syd handed out Ad Astra’s for distribution.
--Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson. OSIDA Notes by Steve Swift
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
Copyright �2013 Oklahoma Space Alliance.