Minutes of August 2022 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met August 13, 2022, at the McMurray’s house in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Clifford and Claire McMurray. Adam Hemphill, Tim Scott, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. Steve Galpin attended by Zoom. OSA President Clifford (Kip) McMurray 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/Update2208.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
We started late due to complications with accessing Update on the laptop. I finally suggested that we use the version that appears on the OSA website, and that worked, although it was the unrevised version. There was only one change between the two versions.
The Wentian module to the Chinese space station Tiangong has a five-meter-long robot arm. [The upcoming Mengtian will as well. The Tianhe core module has a 10.2-meter (34-foot) robot arm, so Tiangong is well supplied with robot arms.]
We watched the launch of the Long March 5B rocket carrying the Wentian module. The first stage couldn’t be restarted so reentry was uncontrolled. Although it was supposed to come down in an empty part of the Indian Ocean, it actually landed in the Sulu Sea near the island of Palawan in the Philippines. [This is the long thin island in the southwestern Philippines, home to a million people.] The debris apparently didn’t hit land. We watched video of the reentry.
The Long March 9 is supposed to launch by 2030, so why is a report that it will be a reusable launch vehicle in 2035.
Impulse Space is a startup that will be using 3-D printed rockets built by Relativity Space. Several of these have already been built, and the first launch of Terran 1, as it is called, will be later this year. A future version, Terran R, will go to Mars in 2024.
One of the women on Blue Origin’s August 4 launch, Vanessa O’Brien, completed the Explorers’ extreme trifecta: She has ascended Mount Everest and descended to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean. She is the first woman to complete the trifecta and the second person overall. [Victor Viscovo, who flew on Blue Origin in June was the first.]
This Week in Space had a tribute to Nichelle Nichols who died July 30 at age 89. She is best known as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek, but she also was a space activist, working for NASA recruiting women and minorities (including Sally Ride, Guion Bluford, Judith Resnik and Ronald McNair. Nichols also served on the NSS Board of Governors for many years.
We have $807.41 in bank account and $267 in cash.
Minutes by OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
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