1. First, I want to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We have made great progress in getting the Manned Spaceflight Operations Association (MSOA) up and running and hope to make more progress this year. One of our main efforts in work is the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 in July. We will keep you updated as plans develop.
2. I have added quite a few names to our distribution list so this is the first message some of you have gotten. I invite you to go to our website at www.mannedspaceops.org to learn what we are all about. While there you will see a manning database we have constructed showing what each of you did in support of manned spaceflight using as our source the manning lists. We know there are errors as there were changes in manning made between when the manning lists came out and flight,. The only way this can get corrected is for you to notify me at alphaflt23@gmail.com and I will make those updates as I get them. You will also notice on the website there is a No Contact spreadsheet. This is a list of the names of people on the database that we have no contact info for. If you see your name on the list or someone you know, have them contact me at the aforementioned email address so we can get them on the distribution list.
3. Anyone getting this email at a .gov or company email address, please send me your personal email address. There are many reasons for this but mostly people change jobs, retire, etc and I need to get away from automatic replies from company addresses when you are out of the office.
4. You will also notice on our website there is a calendar we are trying to keep up to date with planned events as we learn of them.
5. One of the things I need is manning lists for the Shuttle flights on the data base. I have some pretty good lists for Systems Division, the DPS, and GNC folks. If anyone has any lists please send me a copy.
6. If anyone would like to help out on any of the committees we want to form such as the Social Committee, Historical Committee, and a Memorial Committee, please let me know. Linda Ham is chairman of our Social Committee and will be organizing the activities around events we want to celebrate. Frank Hughes is chairman of the Historical Committee and we want to capture as much history as we can. We want to create a Memorial Committee to address putting in place a permanent memorial to recognize you people who made manned spaceflight happen.