Category: Meetings

We did it! The US launched 2 astronauts from Florida on a SpaceX Dragon2 capsule! Weather was iffy but it seemed like the clouds opened up and provided an opportunity at the 2:22 PM launch time. Dean, Keith, Hank, Phil and I were all “zoomed” in to share the event. The 1 minute discrepancy among…
Read more

Keith, Hank, Harry and I checked into the Zoom meeting to share our experiences for the launch. Unfortunately, the countdown reached T-17 minutes and it was scrubbed for weather criteria. Electrical potential and cumulus clouds plus another factor were all out of bounds for a successful launch. Ironically, 25 minutes later all the weather criteria…
Read more

Because of the limitations of Zoom we weren’t able to discuss a few miscellaneous topics, I thought I’d share my notes on them before they become too stale. NASA has been having yearly contests of short amateur films made from their archival footage. Here are some recent winners in Cinespace 2019. Particular moving is this…
Read more

With us all locked down for the coronavirus pandemic, we tried Zoom for a digital meeting. We had good participation with, Keith, Phil, Harry (ending work at Ohare), Hank, Dave (mostly only audio), Beth & Chad, Dean (with a slight delay from technical problems) and myself. I was a little disappointed that when I shared…
Read more

We had a good turn out after an 18 week hiatus. Dean, Beth, Chad, Harry, Dave, Keith and his friend, Hank and I. The background for my presentation had this interesting photo showing men on horseback riding up to check on the Soyuz capsule with one of the Russian helicopters in the shot. I thought…
Read more

I started the meeting with a cool picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. The smile is the distorted image of a galaxy behind the two eyes which has had its light bent by the gravity of the foreground galaxies. The photo was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 which astronauts installed during the last…
Read more

Dean, Silvio, Dave, Beth, Chad and I were in attendance for the first meeting of 2018. Last minute work issues prevented Keith and Phil from attending. This meeting turned into a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Falcon9 fest. I apologize to Dean for delaying our kickoff of the Carl Sagan Cosmos revisit. I promise to minimize my…
Read more

Who would of thought that we would have a new record for MASS attendance with 10 people. It was almost a “standing room only” situation. There was Dean, Silvio, Jim A., Dave, Harry, Dennis, Beth, Chad, myself and Dave’s friend Calvin. One thing I noticed is that when we have that big a group our…
Read more

It was a long 9 weeks since the last meeting but we pressed ahead and got our get-together in before the eclipse. Dean, Silvio, Harry, Harry’s friend Denny and myself were in attendance. There was no main topic tonight but we all looked forward to Harry briefing us on his multiple-day stay at the Oshkosh…
Read more

This was our 50th meeting! Boy, time sure flies when you’re having a good time! Keith, Silvio, Harry, Dave, Phil, Dean and I were in attendance. Since it had been 15 long weeks since our last meeting, we spent quite a bit of time catching up on what people had been up to. Dean made a…
Read more

This was our 49th meeting. Dean, Harry, Dave and his friend Liz, Keith and I were in attendance. As the first order of business, we all suggested that Keith credit himself on the website. It would not exist without his support and technical expertise. There are quite a few interesting programs coming on this November.…
Read more

This was our 48th meeting. Jim A., Keith, Phil, Silvio, Dean and I were in attendance. We suggested that Keith add a spot on the web site assigning himself credit as the designer of the site. But so far I don’t see a picture or any text related to him. 6/19/16 I went to the CSSS meeting…
Read more

Last Friday the meeting started a half hour early, so that we could dine with plenty of time for subsequent Pluto discussion. The evening started with crackers and a cheese ball imprinted with a heart of cheese. We could call that our version of Tombaugh Regio. Some partook in a “Pluto” beer. Actual Uranus (full…
Read more