Minutes of April 12 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met April 12, 2024, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending in person were Clifford McMurray, Adam Hemphill, Tom Koszoru, Tim Scott, 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/Update2504.pdf, so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
Tom Koszoru renewed his membership.
SpaceX recoveries will now be done on the West Coast.
All the astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn mission were non-American. Seventeen days between SpaceX manned launches is a new record.
Andøya is actually the name of a spaceport and company. Their spacecraft is Spectrum.
Blue Ghost lasted for five hours after lunar sunset (and a full lunar daytime -- 14 Earth days -- in sunlight).
CLPS will end in 2028, so what will be CLPS-2. [CLPS=Commercial Lunar Payload Services.]
OSIDA [Oklahoma Space Industrial Development Authority] has finally signed a contract with a commercial space company to come to Oklahoma. They will start operations in two years.
The turnaround for the three-in-twenty-three-days launches would have been seven days for two of them if not for bad weather.
Space Thermal Power can provide thrust for longer.
HR8799 planets have carbon dioxide in their atmospheres. Light blocker (to hide the star) allowed us to see the colors of the planets.
51 Eridani showed one planet which is red.
We looked at a Space News chart on China’s military capabilities in space.
ULA wants to do twelve launches this year.
Space Force wants an “aircraft carrier” [spacecraft carrier?] in space, so made contracts with Gravitics.
Fran2 was the first spacecraft to go farther north than 65° N and farther south than 65° S while orbiting Earth, passing the Arctic and Antarctic Circles while doing so. We watched a video of Earth’s south polar regions as taken from Fram. (The North Pole was still in night.) We watched an interview with the Fran2 astronauts which followed the mission.
We watched a video of dolphins swimming around the Crew 9 return capsule and its retrieval by recovery ship.
--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 ©2025 by Oklahoma Space Alliance.