Month: February 2020

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.

The meeting will be on Saturday, March 7, 2020 at Barbara Bush Library (6817 Cypresswood Dr.; Spring, TX 77379) at 2PM.

Featured Speaker: Kaci Heins
Space Center University Director at Space Center Houston

Kaci Heins is passionate about sharing the wonders of space exploration with all generations and getting students excited about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She has a background in science education, loves learning, life and all things related to space exploration. Heins manages Space Center University, a five-day engineering design program, Stars & STEM evening programs and Camp-In’s, where guests sleep over at Space Center Houston. She has launched numerous high altitude balloons across the country, sent an experiment to the International Space Station and flew on the Zero-G plane twice with student experiments. Kaci is always excited to Dare Mighty Things!

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/

Nathan started the meeting with a bit of space news

Our recent tour to Nanoracks

Launches since our last meeting: https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-log/

Definitely worth watching the press conference afterwards:

Next up in its lunar campaign, China is preparing to launch its Chang’e-5 sample-return mission late this year. Chang’e-5 will launch on the huge Long March 5 rocket and will be the first mission to retrieve samples from the moon since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976. ” ( https://www.space.com/china-moon-far-side-lander-rover-photos-14th-lunar-day.html )

1794 days till the end of 2024 by which time NASA will have astronauts return to the moon as part of the Artemis program.

Progress is being made testing Artemis I.

If you know someone qualified and passionate about getting humanity into space, please have them apply: https://blueorigin.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/BlueOrigin/0/refreshFacet/318c8bb6f553100021d223d9780d30be

Other companies are also putting in a bid for human lunar landers

Dynetics, Sierra Nevada partnering on human-rated lunar lander proposal

It is worth reading the text and the amendments:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5666/text

As well as watching the markup session.

And it is also worth reading Jim Bridenstine’s response to the bill: https://blogs.nasa.gov/bridenstine/2020/01/27/nasa-authorization-bill-update/

The bill still has a long way to go before it becomes law. But it gets things off on a wrong foot. Please write your representative, senators, and the people on the Science committee.

We then talked about the 2020 Space Communicator program

And Adam Hawkins gave his first speech.

He received a “2020 Space Communicator Candidate” certificate

Then we rearranged the room for group discussion on “Why Space” from Robert Zubrin’s “A Case for Space”