Minutes of April 11 Oklahoma Space Alliance Meeting
Oklahoma Space Alliance met April 11, 2026, at the Cyber Hall and Gaming Lounge at Norman Computers in Norman, Oklahoma. Attending were Clifford McMurray, Mark Deaver Dave Sheely and Syd Henderson. We had postponed the Yuri’s night party, and some potential attendees got confused and thought the meeting itself was also cancelled. OSA President Clifford McMurray. presided over the meeting He did an Update discussing links to material covered in the meeting and this is online https://osa.nss.org/Update2604.pdf so I’ll cover the details that aren’t covered there.
This was the meeting after the launch of Artemis II, which increased the number of living people who have been to the Moon from five to nine. There are four moon walkers still alive. [Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmitt. Fred Haise of Apollo 13 went around the Moon but didn’t land for obvious reasons.] The Canadian astronaut was the first person to fly to the Moon was wasn’t American.
There was a lot of publicity about the astronauts experiencing an solar eclipse as they went around the Moon. The reason this was unusual was that the astronauts went to the Moon while the Moon was full. Note that the “ring of fire” you saw in some photographs was false because the Moon is too large at the distance they were.
The astronauts got a recording greeting from the late Jim Lovell who recorded it shortly before his death.
Carlos Garcia-Galan, former deputy manager for the defunct Lunar Gateway, is now leader of the Moon Base initiative. “The Gateway team, both NASA and industry and the international partners, were an awesome team,” Garcia-Galan said in an interview afterward. “While I do believe an orbiting outpost has value in our overall exploration goals, this doesn’t mean that we can’t do it later. We need to be focused on the surface, and everyone wants to be on the surface. So I’m super excited, and I’m sure the rest of the Gateway team will be once they start to shift their focus.” [Arstechica.com] The 362 anticipated missions to set up Moon Base include the installation of a nuclear reactor to power the Base.
NASA doesn’t think any of the proposed commercial space stations are on track. They will spend $280 million on them, which would be sufficient to supply one of them.
It’s not clear if the nuclear-powered SR-1 mission would go into orbit around Mars or go farther out. Power adds up to 20kW. It’s very aggressive to get it done by 2008.
There are $1.1 billion cuts to the ISS budget in the proposed Administration budget (which is odd since the mission of ISS has been extended). NASA’s whole budget would be cut by 23%, which is a rerun of last year’s proposal. Artemis is getting nearly half the remaining budget.
We’re having difficulty with the Early Warning System during the Iran War causing problems for Israel and Oman. We want satellites that can handle this from space, which will be part of the Space Force budget.
Russia anticipates a crewed mission from Baikonur to the ISS this fall.
Mark wonders how Musk is going to cool off his AI satellites. [AI processing produces a huge amount of heat.]
SpaceX’s IPO is to raise $75 billion in capital. The $1.75 trillion valuation would make SpaceX #6 in the world. [If you’re curious, the top five market capitalizations are Nvidoa, Apple, Alphabet. Microsoft and Amazon.] Thus the IPO is a small part of the valuation of the company.
Space tourism is anticipated to go from $2.6 billion in 2026 to $27 billion in 2034.
In June 2025, China already achieved refueling in orbit, so the one in “Update” is the second.
Shimuzo’s plan to use the Moon to produce solar power would require 6800 miles of solar panels to go around the Moon. It also appears to be pretty wide. I’m a tad skeptical.
Blue Origin has 11,000 employees and Bezos is contributing billions of his own money to keep it solvent.
Blue Ring would carry multiple cube sats and use kinetic deflection to deter dangerous asteroids. It has a “slam cam” to observe the result of the impact. [Presumably of the deflector, not the asteroid hitting the Earth.]
We watched a video of the Tianlong 3 launch failure.
SpaceX had another Starlink satellite break up on December 17 of last year. The debris from the latest will reenter in a few weeks.
We watched a video from Moon Base detailing their ten-year plan.
Phase 1: (to 2028) 25 launches, 21 landers, two tonnes of payload to surface/ [Per spacecraft?] Communications increase to greater than 500 Mbps. VIPER will map volatiles for lunar resource prospecting.
Phase 2: (2029-32) 27 launches, 24 landings. Seven rovers including a pressurized rover. Solar panels during the day, RTGS at night.
Phase 3: (2033 -36) 29 launches and landings. Long duration, 8 metric tonnes per launch.
We watched a video on Artemis program update. Artemis IV will spend six days on the Moon, with the whole mission lasting 21 days. The first mission with a Centaur V upper stage will be Artemis V.
--Minutes By OSA Secretary Syd Henderson
Contact person for Oklahoma Space Alliance is Clifford Mcmurray
PO Box 1003
Norman, OK 73070
Webmaster is Syd Henderson.
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