Selenian Boondocks

So, NPR decides to interview Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX. I was really annoyed by the tone of the guy doing the interview. I’ve met Gwynne on one occasion, and I think she handled the interview pretty well all things considered, but the guy’s attitude still torqued me a bit. I mean, if you look at [...]

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Most of you probably read Hobbyspace, but in case some of you haven’t yet today, here’s a quick bleg from Michael Mealling, our VP of Business Development: As many of your may have guessed, we plan on competing for the Lunar Lander Challenge this October. We haven’t put out a huge media splash since the [...]

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by: Ken Murphy, guest blogger The space field never ceases to amaze me. By day I work in a bank doing asset-based lending, and for the last two years I’ve been the airplane stooge, I mean underwriter/analyst. By any measure the U.S. airline industry is a mess, and I just got back from a two-day [...]

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by: Ken Murphy, guest blogger 1) Hydrogen Whether in water form or not, we do know that there is hydrogen at the Lunar poles. This can serve a minumum of two ends: water for a base, fuel for rockets. 2) Oxygen The heavy part of the LH/LOX fuel mix is the oxygen, about 7/8ths of [...]

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I was reading an otherwise pretty interesting article by one of the authors of “The Rocket Company” over on The Space Review this morning. In the article, Patrick was trying to discuss some of the market challenges facing commercial space transportation companies. Much of the content was pretty good, however I spotted an oft repeated [...]

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I figured I wouldn’t be a good space pundit/SpaceX fanboy if I didn’t chime it with at least some irrelevant commentary on SpaceX’s launch failure today. I know some of the people there at SpaceX, and this has got to be a really lousy day for them. I can’t speak from experience regarding what a [...]

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I’m sorry I haven’t had as much time this past week to post too much. Among other things, I had been hoping to post a little review and commentary on the MarsDrive Reference Mission that was linked to last month on Hobbyspace. Unfortunately I’ve been rather busy this past week. We’re starting to get the [...]

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There was an interesting news story over on space.com about a new optical detector for use in laser communication systems. Higher frequencies give you higher bandwidth per given amount of signal power, but so far optical receivers have been inefficient enough that the required laser for communication would be fairly heavy compared to radio communication [...]

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There’s been a lot of blogging recently regarding various teams competing for contracts under the NASA’s COTS program for commercial resupply of the ISS. Most of the focus to-date has been on SpaceX’s Dragon, t/Space’s CXV, and SpaceHab’s Apex capsule (I think I’ve briefly discussed all three at various points on this blog), to the [...]

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Here’s a thought provoking quote I saw recently: “Commercially very little is to be expected from either balloonsor flying machines. For passenger traffic the number carried willbe so small and the cost so great that no competition is possiblewith existing modes of transit.” — Willis L. Moore, chief USWeather Bureau, opening the International Aeronautical Congress, [...]

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