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ASTRA History Should you wish to contact the
society or require general information please contact ASTRA
using the following Email address: Should you encounter any problems
with this Web
Page please email: December 1998 is the
45th anniversary of space flight society meetings in
Scotland, starting as the Scottish branch of the British
Interplanetary Society, and the 35th anniversary of ASTRA as
an independent society. (The BIS itself was founded in 1933,
and is 65 this year.) It is also just two months over twenty
years since the reopening of Airdrie
Observatory,
run by ASTRA's Astronomy Section for Monklands District
Council, now North Lanarkshire. For the 30th anniversary of
the society I completed the archiving of the records then
available, and for the 35th I produced a Chronology, with an
appeal for help in closing the gaps, especially those in the
earliest years. A great deal of fresh material has come to
light since, particularly a full record of the society's
first 20 years, so for the 45/35th anniversary the version
which follows has been extensively revised and
enlarged. Even so, it's
impossible to include everything. Even in its early years
the society was meeting twice a month, in Edinburgh and
Glasgow; it's met at least weekly since 1970, and when it
had six branches in the late 1980's three of them met
monthly, two twice monthly and one weekly, in addition to
exhibition lectures and other one-off events. At a
conservative estimate, there have been at least 3,250 public
meetings. But many of the entries are repeated at other
branches, and many are recurring; e.g. Airdrie's weekly
meetings currently include a monthly 'Night Sky' meeting and
a monthly video night, as well as frequent astronomy and
rocketry events at Drumpellier
Country Centre.
My aim has been to list all the major events and a
representative selection of the rest. It should be enough to
show just how much has been done in the last 45
years. At this point I will
interrupt Duncan's history to comment on a point of
administration. In an attempt to make the history of the
society more 'web friendly' I have broken the history into a
number of web pages - it would have been too large to
include into a single web page. Below you will see a table
which has been used to divide the history into a number of
sections, which have been further divided into periods of 10
ten years. Each of these ten year periods have again been
divided into the individual years - although the size of the
actual pages varies depending on the number of events and
the amount of records for each year within the
section. To visit a particular
period of the ASTRA history simply click on the desired
period within the table below. When you have finished with
that particular period there are a number of access points
within each page which will take you to various points
within the ASTRA history. Alternately, if you
simply wish to read the ASTRA history from start to finish
simply click on the first entry in the table below. Once you
have finished reading the first section simply click on the
"Read Next Page' option at the bottom of the page
(represented by an arrow head). Repeat this instruction
every time you come to the end of a section and you will be
moved to the next period/section in ASTRA's
history.
Click here to return to top of this page
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