Minutes of July 8 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met July 8, 2023, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Clifford and Claire McMurray., Mark Deaver, Adam Hemphill, John Northcutt, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. 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 https://osa.nss.org/Update2307.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
Virgin Galactic can now fly six passengers including pilots. We watched a video of the entire June 29 flight including landing. This was the first Virgin Galactic flight with paying passengers after a test flight in May.
We watched a video of Ecuador and India signing the Artemis accords, the 26th and 27th countries to do so. [India has a substantial space program, so I’m glad to see this addition.]
We watched a video of BepiColombo’s flyby of Mercury. Still two and a half years to go before it enters Mercury orbit.
“Hot staging,” which SpaceX is planning to use in future Starship flights, means the first stage doesn’t completely shut off before the second stage lights up. A side effect of this is that Starship will be able to carry 10% more cargo.
We looked at an article on pulverizing asteroids so they will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
We looked at an article on EmberCore, a proposed nuclear propulsion system that would make exploration of the outer Solar System more practical.
We examined a proposal to build a radio telescope on the Moon’s far side, through the use of in situ materials.
We watched a video advertising Zero Gravity concerts. Kip used this as an excuse to replay “Upside Down and Inside Out” by OK Go, which was filmed on the “Vomit Comet”.
Space Force wants one hundred and thirty-five satellites.
Projecting the rate at which SpaceX is having to increase its number of avoidance maneuvers in orbit, by 2028 they may have to do 2,000,000 of these per year.
From This Week @ NASA: The James Webb Space Telescope has detected the most distant known supermassive black hole. It has also detected methyl cations (i.e., CH3+.)
The Orion space capsule will test laser communication on Artemis 2.
We watched a video “A New Golden Age of Space” with John Gedmark.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24qG99_wVw
Adam has created a poster for OSA meetings. We did a critical appraisal and will continue at the next meeting.
--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.
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