Minutes of June Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met June 18, 2022, at the McMurray’s house in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Clifford and Claire McMurray. Adam Hemphill, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. Since Cliff and Claire had just gotten back from ISDC and other travels, Dave Sheely presided over the meeting He did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at http://osa.nss.org/Update2206.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
Starship is not going to immediately launch from Cape Canaveral because of the time it would require constructing a new launchpad. [The first Starship launch will be from Texas.]
We watched a video of the delay of FAA’s final environmental review of Starship. However, it looks like SpaceX must have passed since Starship is nearing its first orbital test flight.
We watched a video on a European Spaces conference. Space is now a strategic, economic and security battlefield.
We watched a video from Collins Aerospace on their new spacesuits.
We watched a video of Blue Origin’s fifth peopled launch and landing.
We read an article watched a video on the Modular Artificial-Gravity Orbital Refinery Spacecraft, which is a response to NASA’s Technology Transfer Program. This relies on counterrotating rings to simulate gravity (and incidentally balancing the angular momentum of the whole spacecraft. I’ve seen this proposed for providing artificial gravity for deep space missions.
Musk presented a video on the launch the UKs new (solar) Power station to create limitless energy. This would go up around 2035. Adam mentioned that the organization producing the video is not a real channel but includes a lot of speculation, and the narrator’s voice is computer-generated, which apparently is a thing now. The craft presented certainly seems to be highly speculative/
We watched a video on building large structures in space.
We watched a video on possible legislation to give a National Guard component to the Space Force. This is the second attempt and has bipartisan support.
We always watch episodes of This Week at NASA. This week we saw the Europa Clipper being assembled, the new supersonic aircraft QUESST, NASA grow plants in soil from the Moon. The shock wave from the great Tonga volcanic eruption reached the ionosphere as well as the lower atmosphere.
We watched Adam’s video of the First Point-to-Point flight in Honduras, 27 miles test flight to a small village over rough terrain taking thirty minutes. It ended in a controlled (and apparently intentional) crash. It looks like the next step is to have a soft landing.
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 ©2022 by Oklahoma Space Alliance.