We had our meeting at the St. Louis County Library branch in Clayton and had quite good attendance of 16 members. . We also had John Lakey (Director of the Planetarium at the St Louis Science Center) attend the meeting.  We had a number of things to talk about.

1. Launch at the St Louis Science Center Planetarium - July 20, 2013. The launch is on and we will be meeting at the Planetarium at 8:30 a.m. The Planetarium will open at 9:30 am. We have access to the archery field all day and the Science Center is providing 6 tables in the Planetarium entrance area to be used for building rockets and rocket displays. The Science Center is covering the cost of all materials (including the rocket kits) and suggested we plan on raffling off the kits to kids who attend. We will help the winners build their kits and then fly them at the archery field. We have chosen the Quest StarHawk and have purchased 60 kits. We are going to use Estes A8-3 motors and will purchase enough bulk packs to cover the 60 rockets. We plan on supporting the event all day and do need help. We will still provide a display in the Planetarium if the weather is bad. I will have a separate post to cover the event.

2. We may still do a TV spot prior to the Science Center launch. We have several members who can help set up a small launch in the Planetarium parking lot depending on whether a local TV station requests a segment. We'll try to show parts of the kits and do a brief science lesson. The TV station or media person from the Science Center will contact us on short notice if this might happen.

2. A new member (Dave Kovar) who  just moved to the St. Louis area and pitched an idea for recognizing the anniversary of Apollo 11 next year in the April/May2014  time frame as an educational outreach program.   He has organized similar events in New Mexico for other Apollo flights and has had Apollo flight director Gene Kranz and Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke attend. He has already coordinated with the Science Center and asked us to participate in an educational launch. This sounds like an exciting event with the potential of Gene Kranz coming to the St. Louis area.  Dave plans to discuss the details in future meetings and on our web site. The membership was very interested in helping out. Welcome Dave!

3. Dan Welling has obtained detailed pricing info and embroidery samples for t-shirts, hats and polo shirts. He presented the options at the meeting and all agreed that the graphics will be very impressive (although a few changes will be required).. We had already approved a purchase of t-shirts and hats to be ordered for the Science Center. We also discuss polo shirts with embroidered logos and a list has been started that will be ordered immediately. Look for a separate post to detail how to get hats, t-shirts, and polos. Twelve hats have been ordered that will be fluorescent orange and have the logo, American flag, and website URL on it. These will be available to members for the Science Center launch. Here are the sample embroidered samples Dan has received.

4. The board of directors is discussing the status of the August scout launch since the weather may be very hot. We are considering rescheduling to September or October and more details will be available after the July 20th event. We are still planing to host 200 cub scouts at this event with rocket assembly to occur.

5. Ken Gianino has found that Bandanas on Gravois in south county, has a meeting room available with no minimum food purchase. We are considering having the August meeting there as a trial. Look for more information on the web site.

Thanks to all who attended the meeting - we look forward to seeing everyone at the Science Center on July 20th!