Minutes of January 11 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met January 11, 2024, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending in person were Clifford McMurray, Adam Hemphill, Julie Keosourinha, John Northcutt, Dave Sheely, and Syd Henderson. OSA President Clifford McMurray presided over the meeting. Clifford did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online at https://osa.nss.org/Update2501.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
There were 13 Rocketlab launches in 2024 and 17 Russian. By comparison, SpaceX predicted 136 launches and made 134. By comparison, China made 67 launches out of 68, so SpaceX made twice as many launches as China, which nonetheless set a national record for more launches. Many of these were launching satellites for China’s new communications network.
The current configuration of SLS cannot make a moon landing and it is likely that the configuration that can is dead. SLS is both overbuilt and underbuilt for what it needs to do.
China may have spent more on Space in 2024 than the US.
We looked at a Space News article on NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman and the upcoming confirmation hearings. He owns stock in SpaceX (in connection with the Polaris Dawn mission) and if he retains it he could have a potential conflict of interest, so expect the subject to come up.
NASA has two concepts for returning the samples Perseverance is collecting on Mars, one using a sky crane, and the second a heavy launcher. Adam is skeptical (as am I) of RocketLab’s 2031 date for their bid for the Sample Return mission, partly because the first Neutron launch was moved from late 2024 to May 2025.
A typo in Update: The American record for longest spacewalk is eight (not nine) hours and 56 minutes, so China’s Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong’s 9 hours and 6 minutes is indeed a new record. (The American record was a ISS mission in 2001.)
We watched a video on Mars Chopper, a proposed drone that would have six helicopter-type rotors, one at each vertex of a hexagon.
Thailand is the first nation to sign both the Artemis Accords and the ILRS (China’s version).
Killer satellites tend to move slowly to their target, so ULA’s proposal to intercept them is viable. However, it would also add a deplorable amount of debris (as might the killer satellite if that is its mission).
The retired military weather satellite that broke up on December 18 is one of a series that has a bad record of breaking up in orbit. Also, since it broke up at an altitude of 840 km, the debris will be up for a very long time.
--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Claire McMurray.
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