General Information
These reports appear in the Friday (before our monthly meeting held on the first Thursday of the month) editions of the 'Clacton Gazzette' and 'Essex Evening Standard' in their 'Neighbourhood News' sections
'Orion' - America's Plans for a Return to the Moon by Peter Carlo
At the March 6th meeting our chairman Peter Carlo, gave an informative and very interesting talk describing 'Project Orion' - America's plans for a return to the Moon. He presented a series of artist concepts of the technology followed by two animated movies.
Orion - Heavily based on the successfull and therefore proven 'Apollo' technology but has some significant differences. It's much bigger - 4 man as opposed to Apollo's 3 man crew, aimed towards a permanent presence on the Moon and consists of two phases. Phase one involves the use of an unmanned heavy lift vehcle to transport lunar lander to lunar orbit and habitat modules and/or rovers to the lunar surface. Phase two uses a lighter more streamlined rocket to transort the crew. The rockets will make use of shuttle type reusable solid boosters combined with Russian engines (which were found in an air-conditioned storage facility in Russia and purchased by the Americans in bulk).
The Next Meeting
The next monthly meeting to be held on the 3rd April will feature our own version of 'Question Time'. A panel of members will try to answer astronomy based questions posed by the audience. The meeting will be held as usual at the 'Friends Meeting House' in Granville Road, Clacton . Please note that new members and visitors are always welcome at these meetings. Visitors are very welcome but are charged a fee of £1.50.