Dallas Mars

All:
Sorry for the late notice.  no excuses – i messed up.

But yes, we will have our monthly meeting this sunday, 6pm, CDT. 
-feedback / discussion from Moonday – what to do next year?-mars society convention-upcoming SLS launch-and a surprise announcement of a special speaker for september!!
See you all Sunday at 6pm CDT!

Hi!

I know this Sunday, August 25th, is supposed to be our monthly meeting, but I ended up being unable to get a reservation for a place to meet.

Normally, of course, we meet at Norma’s.  We got put down for every month for the rest of the year – I thought (they said), but when I called to confirm they made a mistake and lost our reservation for this Sunday, and another large party is already booked.  The manager was very apologetic, and confirmed our reservations for the rest of the year AND promised us half off our next meeting, Sunday, Sept 29!!  (So, some good news!!)

Our backup is usually Outback, but they would not give reservations (apparently that is not an Outback thing) and would not agree to  us using the patio (“Maybe – you’ll have to come and we’ll decide then.” I decided not to risk it). 

We don’t have any pressing business, and though I will really miss seeing all of you guys, I think we can skip a month, enjoy the end of summer, and meet in September.

Briefly, we have the usual flurry of activities:

• URC rule making for 2020 is starting up
• October Star Wars Day is coming up
• The National Convention is also in late October! 

I’ve seen a flurry of space news…

• Huntsville is officially named the center for the manned return to the Moon – we’ll see if our Texas delegation can pull it back.
• Europa has an official probe, to be launched on SLS, scheduled for the mid ’20’s.
• More interest in the possibility of Early life on Mars.
• And much more.

Sorry, and see you in September!

Kurt

All,

I know this is right after Moon Day, but let’s get together and talk about lessons learned and catpure ideas for next year!

The meeting is this Sunday, 6pm, Norma’s, at Plano, near Rt 75 and 15th street!

Kurt

All,

Our usual watering hole, Norma’s, was booked up, so we will give ourselves a summer barbecue treat and meet at the Outback for June’s meeting, June 30th, Sunday, 6PM, in Plano.

This is our last meeting before Moon Day, July 20, so please come and make sure all of our plans are in place!!

This will be the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon (was it really 50 years ago this July?) so i expect record crowds at the Frontier of Flight Museum. (It is also the 43rd anniversary since Viking landed on Mars…..)

This is also the first meeting since URC, and we can go over the highlights from Utah!

Looking forward to seeing you all Sunday!

Kurt

P.S. How about the Falcon Heavy nighttime launch?

An interesting decision occurred on Sept 27, 2018, when the United Space Alliance – the Lockheed Martin – Boeing consortium that launches many US payloads into space, chose Blue Origin’s BE-4 as the main rocket for their next generation Vulcan rocket. The decision is another case where an ‘upstart’ space company, this one backed by Billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, won out over ‘traditional’ space contractors, in this case the successor’s to Rocketdyne, the storied developer of the F-1 and J-2 engines that powered the Apollo era Saturn V. While not unexpected, the decision in favor of Blue Origin is interesting in that their BE-4 engine was considered more mature and more advanced than the other offerings. this decision is another one of the developments in the Space field in the last decade that indicate we are seeing a tectonic shift away from traditional contractors, and the traditional way of doing things, changes that promise a much faster pace of advancement and lowering of costs for Space exploration in the near future. – Kurt C