Fellow SLRAers,
It looks like the first weekend of April is going to be a busy one for SLRA. Besides having a high power event for the Boom Crew that weekend, I have been in contact with the Cosmosphere Special Events Director in Hutchinson, Kansas. We have been invited to put on a Launch Reenactment event as part of their Apollo 13 50th Anniversary Celebration weekend -https://cosmo.org/news-and-events/Apollo13Event .
Our event will be the Grand Finale of an incredible weekend and will be held on Sunday Morning April 5th from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. We will be partnering with the Kansas Organization of Space Modelling (KOSMO). I have already been working with KOSMO members Duane Lanterman and John Palmer on the early planning stages.
The main part of the commemoration will be from 10:00 until 11:00 am where we will be stepping through the history of the US and Russian space programs by launching scale replicas of thirteen historic rockets: Wac Corporal, V-2, Vostok, Jupiter-C, Little Joe, Mercury Redstone, Mercury Atlas, Gemini 7, Atlas Agena, Gemini 6A, Little Joe II, Saturn IB, and Apollo 13.
The Cosmosphere is providing a PA system and announcer. Hopefully we’ll have one or more of the Apollo 13 dignitaries attending our Sunday morning event. The rest of the time from 11:00 am – 2:00 pm will be a Sport Launch activity. Our Apollo 13 Launch Reenactment/Commemoration event is going to be held at the Kansa State Fairgrounds in Hutchinson, so we’ll have plenty of room to fly low-mid power rockets.
I am also working with the Cosmosphere to get SLRA and KOSMO volunteers free access to the Saturday afternoon Mission Control Debriefing that will be attended by several of the Mission Controllers and Flight Directors, as well as the Jim Lovell and Fred Haise. Normal cost to attend this event for non-Cosmosphere members is $45. I’ll have more information at tomorrow’s meeting. Looking forward to seeing you all there.
Thanks a bunch and Happy Rocketeering!!
Dave Kovar, SLRA President