Nov. 2, 2019 – Monthly Meeting – featuring Tom Rowan – Apollo 11 Engineer and Yash Chandramouli – Matthew Isakowitz Fellow

Join us for our Monthly NSS North Houston Space Society (http://NorthHoustonSpace.org) meeting. Come join others who are excited about exploring the cosmos, learning how to use the resources of space to improve human life, and who want to go and spread humanity to the rest of the universe.

Our November 2, 2018 meeting will be at Barbara Bush Library (6817 Cypresswood Dr.; Spring, TX 77379) at 2PM.

We will have Tom Rowan come speak to us. He designed the actuator for the radar disc on the Lunar Lander used on Apollo 11 which landed Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the moon on July 24, 1969.  He also invented the hermetically sealed DC motors that were used by the NASA Viking Lander on Mars in 1976.  And he has over 50 years of engineering experience. 

And we will also have Yash Chandramouli come talk to us about the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship. He is a MS/PhD student studying Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University.  His research interests include spacecraft formation-flying, reinforcement learning, and spacecraft pose estimation from images.

The Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program made an immense impact on his life and career path and he is excited to talk about his experience!  

If you are a college junior, college senior, or graduate student who intends to pursue a full-time career in the commercial spaceflight industry, then you should apply before the December 2, 2019 deadline: https://www.matthewisakowitzfellowship.org/apply

Meetings open to all age groups and interest levels. Come explore with us the potential that developing and exploring space has to better life here on earth and to open up new frontiers creating new perspectives that can help enrich the human experience.

The Vision of NSS is people living and working in thriving communities beyond the Earth, and the use of the vast resources of space for the dramatic betterment of humanity.

The Mission of NSS is to promote social, economic, technological, and political change in order to expand civilization beyond Earth, to settle space and to use the resulting resources to build a hopeful and prosperous future for humanity. Accordingly, we support steps toward this goal, including human spaceflight, commercial space development, space exploration, space applications, space resource utilization, robotic precursors, defense against asteroids, relevant science, and space settlement oriented education.

Website:  http://NorthHoustonSpace.org
MeetUp: https://www.meetup.com/Future-North-Houston-National-Space-Society-Chapter/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/NssNorthHoustonSpaceSociety/

Summary of October 5, 2019 Meeting

We had a wonderful October meeting at the Barbara Bush Library.

Nathan Price, chapter founder and president, introduced himself:

And shared the Vision of the National Space Society (NSS):

He also shared recent space news. There were 7 launches since the last meeting (https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-log/):

October 3, 2019 – NASA astronaut Nick Hague, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and United Arab Emirates space agency astronaut Hazza AlMansoori return safely to earth in a  Russian Soyuz MS-12 capsule from the International Space Stations (ISS).

Intuitive Machines announced that they would use a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2021 to launch their Nova-C lunar lander

We are excited about the progress that Intuitive Machines is making. And we look forward to our December 14, 2019 meeting when Trent Martin, VP of Aerospace Services will be speaking to our chapter.

We also talked about Elon Musk’s starship update:

And we look forward to the great things coming up. In a couple of months Starship Mk 1 will travel to 20kms. In 6 months it achieves orbit. And then in 2023 the DearMoon project to send a group of artists around the moon.

The Anastasia Prosina shared with us the projects she is working on in Space Architecture.

Master student of Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, University of Houston, will give a talk on why space architecture is a critical point in any space mission. She will cover projects she has been involved in, in particular, a Mars Analog Habitat commissioned by Mars Society.

Afterwards Mallesh Maharana shared his weightless experience

We also covered some upcoming events:

October 5, 2019 https://moon.nasa.gov/observe

World Space Week, October 4-10 annually, is the largest space event on Earth.

“The Moon:  Gateway to the Stars.”

“The General Assembly declares 4 to 10 October World Space Week to celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition”

UN General Assembly resolution,
6 December 1999

https://www.WorldSpaceWeek.org/

Thank you, Anastasia and Mallesh for sharing your knowledge and experience. They each received an Ecosphere.

We also had a few drawings.