Minutes of April 13 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met April 13, 2024, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Adam Hemphill, Claire and Clifford McMurray, Mark Deaver, Steve Marino, and Syd Henderson. OSA President Adam Hemphill presided over the meeting He presented an Update put together by Clifford McMurray discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at https://osa.nss.org/Update2404.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
April 13 is the day after Yuri’s Night, so we started an hour early to have a chance to celebrate.
Steve told us that he is moving to Portugal in May via cruise ship via Florida. I warned him about kraken but not the Bermuda Triangle.
Chang’e 6 is gathering samples from the far side of the Moon.
The Japanese are developing a pressurized lunar rover. An unpressurized rover has options of several rockets capable of carrying. A larger, pressurized rover needs to be more particular in what rockets are used.
The recently retired Delta IV costs $400 million per launch.
Falcon Heavy will have payloads put in while lying on its side, then made vertical. Delta IV had to load vertically.
ULA is still not quite competitive with SpaceX, but its Vulcan launcher makes it close.
India’s prototype spaceplane is Pushpak and successfully carried out its second RLV landing experiment (RLV-LEX-02). [RLV being Reusable Launch Vehicle and LEX landing experiment. They also use HEX for Hypersonic Flight Experiment, REX for Return Flight Experiment and SPEX for Scramjet Propulsion Experiment. They also have OREX, the Orbital Return Flight Experiment. They’re ambitious.--Syd] We watched a video of the landing.
The Rosalind Franklin Mars rover will now use an American launcher and ESA platform. [This was original supposed to use a Russian platform but that became impossible after Russia invaded Ukraine.--Syd]
Sierra Space aims to land critical supplies anywhere on the planet within 90 minutes of when it was requested.
Time moves more rapidly on the Moon due to lower gravity. It takes about fifty years to get a one second offset. So be prepared to synchronize your atomic clocks! [This is going to actually be a problem with time dilation, and gravitational time shift, so we need to establish our Star Dates now!-Syd]
We chose to celebrate with snacks and a movie. The movie was The Martian, which is still a lot of fun to watch.
--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
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