In our meeting announcement for the November meeting, which was to feature the return of Apollo program veteran Kenneth Bowen, we mentioned that his appearance was subject to his state of health. This evening Ken came down with flu-like symptoms including chills and fever, and out of abundance of caution the Clear Lake Area Chapter is cancelling this November meeting.

We apologize and hope to feature Ken again some time early next year after he has a chance to rest and recover. While his symptoms are not serious, any illness at the age of 92 has to be taken very seriously.

At the present time our December Christmas social which is planned to be held in the home of Ken and his wife Nancy is still on our calendar. We hope that they can both be ready to receive guests by that time. Currently our social is scheduled for Saturday, December 7th, from 5 pm to 9 pm. We plan to feature finger foods and refreshments, with an ongoing showing of the Tom Hanks miniseries From the Earth to the Moon along with Nancy’s playing at her piano. Their home is in the Green Tee section of Pearland, off of Scarsdale Boulevard/Yost Road west of the Gulf Freeway. Detailed directions will be emailed to those who RSVP. Members from the North Houston Chapter are welcome as well. Please let us know if you plan to come!

Again, we apologize for the short notice and for any inconvenience, but we trust that you understand.

The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, September 17th in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. A Zoom meeting option will also be available for the Chapter business portion of the meeting; information is posted below and on our Chapter web site.

At this meeting nominations will open for Chapter officers to be voted on during next month’s meeting on October 15th. Candidates for Chapter office must be, or must agree to become, members in good standing of both the National Space Society and the Moon Society. Director eligibility is as listed:

• President (currently held by Eric Bowen)
• Vice President (currently held by Doug Hall)
• Treasurer (currently held by Jay Lewchanin)
• Secretary (currently vacant—volunteers?)
• Director, Position 1 (currently held by Marianne Dyson)
• Director, Position 2 (currently held by Keith Dauzat)
• Director, Position 3 (vacant)

For the Director positions, Position 1 must be held by a member of BOTH the National Space Society and the Moon Society. Position 2 must be held by a member of the National Space Society, and Position 3 must be held by a member of The Moon Society.

Nominations of eligible members will also be accepted via email to info@nss-houston-moon.org up through 11:59 p.m. on October 11th, 2024. Nominations will reopen at the October business meeting just prior to the vote. Nominations require a second, or two concurring email nominations from separate individuals.

Our meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run to just before nine (when the facility closes). We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

Eric Bowen is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Clear Lake Area NSS/Moon Society Chapter Meeting
Time: Sep 17, 2024 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 864 6382 5819
Passcode: 437358

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The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, August 20th in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. A Zoom meeting option will also be available for the Chapter business portion of the meeting; information is posted below. Also, please see the attached meeting documents.

Our meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run to just before nine (when the facility closes). We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

Zoom Meeting Info is at the bottom of this post.

In Memoriam

Larry Jay Friesen, Ph. D.
Clear Lake Area Chapter Director, Position 3, emeritus
Chapter Scientist

Larry Friesen was born on September 7, 1946, to Eric and Dorothy Friesen. He was the oldest of their four children. His formative years were all spent in Kansas — Wilson (until age 8), LeRoy (age 8-11), and Clay Center (through high school as an honor roll student), and then college at the University of Kansas.
As the Space Age emerged in the late 50s and early 60s, Larry became fascinated with outer space. That interest led him to be a leader in the Clay Center Community High School science club, where he and other members spent time building and launching small rockets. He was gifted in science and math, obtaining his B.S. in Physics from University of Kansas, where he graduated in three years and was the recipient of a prestigious Summerfield Scholarship which paid for his undergraduate tuition. He was awarded scholarships to Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he received his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Astrophysics.
In college, one of his fellow scholarship hall residents recalled that he “read encyclopedias for entertainment.” He loved history and was interested in the origins of the world wars and would philosophize about such things with anyone who would listen.
It was his dream to be the first man on the moon. Although he did not achieve that goal, much of his professional career as an aerospace engineer was spent working for NASA contractors at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He worked on space shuttle glide patterns and how space junk collisions could cause damage to spacecraft.
Larry’s nephews and nieces remembered Larry’s deep love of space and often playing SolarQuest with him during the Christmas holidays. Growing up, they always thought of him as their “space uncle with multiple degrees doing something for NASA.” They remember Larry helping them identify constellations. They recalled his giving them “cool science toys and a complete engineering manual for the Space Shuttle.”
He loved to have philosophical conversations with family members. Topics ranged from reasons why space junk is hard to clear and a critique of things he saw in popular science fiction shows — “well, if you really had to design a warp drive….”

Farewell and Godspeed, Larry. We hope that you have that warp drive ready for us when we get there…

Zoom Meeting Info:

Eric Bowen is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Clear Lake Area NSS & Moon Society Chapter Meeting
Time: Aug 20, 2024 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 833 9448 8043
Passcode: 637876

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Meeting ID: 833 9448 8043
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The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, September 19th in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. The conference room is on the right down the hall as you come in that side entrance door. A Zoom meeting option will also be available; the information is given below.

We’re expecting that Mr. Dave Cheuvront will come and share with us on the legislative outreach efforts of NSS, with emphasis on success stories and the ways in which you, personally, can get involved!

Our meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run about two hours. We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

At this meeting nominations will open for chapter officers and directors for 2024. Nominations will also be accepted via email to info@nss-houston-moon.org up through 11:59 p.m. Friday, October 15th and voted on at our October business meeting. Nominations require a second if made in person or two independent nominations if made by email. You can only nominate one candidate for each position, whether in person or by email. You must be a member in good standing of the National Space Society and/or the Moon Society and have indicated that you wish to be considered a member of this Chapter.

For information, the current slate of officers and positions is as follows:

• President: Eric Bowen
• Vice-President: Doug Hall
• Treasurer: Jay Lewchanin
• Secretary: Vacant
• Director, Position 1: Marianne Dyson
• Director, Position 2: Keith Dauzat
• Director, Position 3: Larry Friesen

Candidates for all officer positions and for Director, Position 1 must be or must be willing to become members in good standing of BOTH the National Space Society and The Moon Society. Candidates for Director, Position 2 must be a member in good standing of the National Space Society. Candidates for Director, Position 3 must be a member in good standing of The Moon Society. Our next regularly scheduled meeting following this one is our Chapter’s annual meeting scheduled for October 17th.

The meeting documents (agenda for this meeting and minutes from last meeting) will be available soon on our chapter web site, or send an email inquiry to info@nss-houston-moon.org. See you Tuesday the 19th!

Topic: Orbital Debris (Space Junk): What It Is, and Why It Matters

Presented by Dr. Larry Friesen

Our own Chapter Scientist and Director, Dr. Larry Friesen, will be bringing us a presentation on this timely topic for our June meeting. As space grows more crowded, the proliferation of objects in orbit hampers astronomy and poses real threats to space missions and infrastructure. Come hear Dr. Friesen’s take on this as we meet in the small meeting room (break room) at the Bay Area Community Center on June 20th!

We’ll be giving Larry the floor as soon as we have the Zoom meeting setup configured and running so that there will be time for questions and answers and give and take. Chapter business will be minimal and will be conducted following Dr. Friesen’s time to speak. Come and join us that night…either by Zoom or in person!

NOTE: Dr. Friesen has recommended the Wikipedia article on Space Debris as a source of background information including photos and graphs.

Clear Lake Area Chapter meeting:
Tuesday the 20th, 6:30 p.m.

The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, June 20th in the break room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. The break room is on the left as you come in that side entrance door. A Zoom meeting option will also be available; information is given below.

Our meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run about two hours. We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments including Subway sandwiches and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

Our next regularly scheduled meeting following this one is scheduled for Tuesday, August 15th, also at 6:30 p.m., back in our normal conference room meeting location. Other meetings for the balance of the year will be on September 19th, and our Chapter’s annual meeting is scheduled for October 17th.

The meeting documents (agenda for this meeting and minutes from last meeting) will be posted below, or send an email inquiry to info@nss-houston-moon.org. See you Tuesday the 20th!

Zoom Meeting Info:

Please note that we are going to a new format for our Zoom meeting information. The meeting info should remain the same for future meetings; however, one condition is that we cannot post it publicly on web sites or social media. I’m setting up an ‘autoreply’; if you send an email to zoominfo@nss-houston-moon.org you should receive full particulars.

Kenneth Bowen has been an Air Force helicopter rescue pilot, an oil field roustabout, and since 1959 an aerospace engineer. After early years with McDonnell Aircraft as a wind tunnel engineer, including the pre-construction tests on what would become the Houston Astrodome, he was tapped by Link Simulations, Inc. to work on the team bringing the Lunar Module Simulator to life…a challenging task as, in those early ears, the design of the prototype they were modeling was still very much in flux!

Ken continued with Singer-Link and later Ford Aerospace into the Space Shuttle years. He headed up Ford’s Single System Trainer unit which Shuttle astronaut candidates used to practice approach and landing in the days when the large full motion simulator was still under development. He’s now retired and a grandfather of eight and father of two…including myself!

For those of you familiar with our Chapter’s meetings, once the (inevitable) technical glitches are resolved Ken will be first up on our program; there will be time for questions and answers and give and take. Chapter business will be minimal and will be conducted following Ken’s time to speak. Come and join us that night…either by Zoom or in person!

Clear Lake Area Chapter meeting:
Tuesday the 18th, 6:30 p.m.

The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, April 18th in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. A Zoom meeting option will also be available for the Chapter business portion of the meeting; information is posted below and on our Chapter web site.

As mentioned above, my dad Kenneth Bowen will be speaking on his time in the Apollo and Shuttle programs. Come hear the stories from a man who was there!

Our meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. and run to just before nine (when the facility closes). We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

Our next regularly scheduled meeting following this one is scheduled for Tuesday, June 20th, also at 6:30 p.m. Please note that this meeting will be in the small ‘break room’ next to the office as the conference room was already booked at the time we made our reservations. Other meetings for the balance of the year will be on August 15th and September 19th, and our Chapter’s annual meeting is scheduled for October 17th. The August, September, and October meetings will all be on Tuesday evenings at 6:30 p.m. in our normal venue, the conference room.

Zoom Meeting Info: Through an arrangement with the Clear Lake GTO club and our member David Cheuvront we’ve set up a Zoom meeting for remote attendees. The meeting info is as follows:

Topic: CLA-NSS April Meeting
Time: Apr 18, 2023 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 879 7405 9471
Passcode: 141298
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Meeting Documents

Our speaker has requested that the following documents be made available: “Our Time” by Gene Kranz, and “America Today/Tomorrow,” author unknown.

On February 21st, 2023, the Clear Lake Area Chapter of the National Space Society and Moon Society met in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center just up the road from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. We had snacks available for those attending in person, as well as a Zoom meeting option for those wishing to attend remotely.

Our own Chapter vice-president Doug Hall gave us an excellent presentation on the background and development of nuclear rocket engines, especially the former NERVA project which met all of its development targets before being canceled during the Nixon administration…likely for being too successful; some saw it as a threat to further development of chemical rockets for the Shuttle program. There have been a few revivals of the technology, and even now it’s being looked at again in the form of DRACO (Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations). Doug even went into Soviet and Russian developments, at least as far as the information is publicly available. As you can tell, this field is of great interest to Doug and we all appreciated his expertise. We’ll post his digital slide presentation in ODP format below.

We followed Doug’s presentation with a short Chapter business session. Our next scheduled meeting is set for April 18^th, 2023 at 6:30 p.m., again in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center off NASA 1 in Clear Lake Park. For this next meeting, we’re planning to invite Kenneth Bowen to share some of his hands-on memories from working in flight simulation for Singer/Link and Ford Aerospace during the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. It’ll be good; don’t miss it! We hope to see you there!

Clear Lake Area Chapter meeting:
Tuesday the 21st, 6:30 p.m.

The Clear Lake Area Chapter will meet on Tuesday, February 21st in the conference room of the Bay Area Community Center in Clear Lake Park beginning at 6:30 p.m. The address is 5002 NASA Road 1; Seabrook, Texas. The Community Center is north of NASA 1, away from the lake; enter through the side door adjacent to the parking lot as the main entrance may be locked after 5:00 p.m. A Zoom meeting option will also be available; information is given below.

Come hear our own Doug Hall speak on:

The NERVA Project: Where we were, What we lost, What we might get back soon!

NERVA was the NASA acronym for “Nuclear Engined Rocket Vehicle Aloft” and the associated project to develop a flight-worthy nuclear engine in the 1960s and early 1970s. Join the Clear Lake Area Chapter as our own Doug Hall reviews some of the accomplishments and milestones of the project, and shares with us recent developments which could lead to a revival of this technology! This is one of Doug’s special areas of interest, so you don’t want to miss this one!

Please note a slight meeting time change to 6:30 p.m. as Harris County is keeping the facility open a bit later on Tuesdays now. We’re planning to offer a few light refreshments and bottled water; your own contributions are also welcome of course!

Our next regularly scheduled meeting following this one is scheduled for Tuesday, April 18th, also at 6:30 p.m.

Zoom Meeting Info: Through an arrangement with the Clear Lake GTO club and our member David Cheuvront we’re planning to set up a Zoom meeting for remote attendees: Topic: NSS Clear Lake Chapter Meeting Time: Feb 21, 2023 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 825 2789 9426
Passcode: 313878
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