Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 27th, 2008
by guest blogger KenHowdy all! I’m back and (semi-) recovered from an unanticipated trip to upstate NY for my grandmother’s funeral. Always a somber occasion for anyone, and of course a time for reflection on not only the past in one’s life, but also the future. The picture of me to the right is one [...]
Posted in Family on Feb 23rd, 2008
My little sister, Jennifer successfully earned her “Mrs. Degree” yesterday up in Utah. The name transfusion was also successful, and she now has a new last name. Walton or Walten or something like that. I’d actually know for sure, and I’d probably even post a picture of the happy sappy couple if anyone had bother [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, Space Development, Space Transportation, Technology on Feb 20th, 2008
Something that’s been bugging me for some time is the confusion surrounding the term “space tug”. The term’s been used to describe at least two very different ideas for many years now. At NGEC-2, I tried to inject a little clarity into my working group’s discussions by drawing the distinction between “tugs” and what I [...]
Posted in Entrepreneurship, NASA, Space Development on Feb 20th, 2008
In addition to the working groups, there were several speakers throughout the conference. While there most ideas presented at space conferences aren’t particularly new, there were a few ideas from the various speakers (and from conversations I had at the conference) that I thought were worth mentioning. This may be a bit random, but I’m [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, NASA, Space Development, Space Policy on Feb 16th, 2008
Apparently unbeknownst to most people in the space blogosphere, there was a second space related conference going on in Silicon Valley this past week (at about the same time). This conference, the second “Next Generation Exploration Conference” was an invitation-only conference for young, “emerging global space leaders” put on by NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate’s [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 16th, 2008
My friend and coworker Michael Mealling has been telling me for a while about this blogger widget that he and some friends from Georgia were developing on-the-side. The widget, called “Skribit” allows blog readers to suggest and vote on topics that they would like to see the blogger (in this case me) write more about. [...]
Posted in ESAS, Launch Vehicles, NASA on Feb 8th, 2008
…it’s how you place the blame. Or at least that’s how a friend of mine at NASA once put it. Apparently, in the wake of yet more news leaks about severe technical issues on Ares I, Mike Griffin decides to play the blame game (hat tip: Space Politics): A: Let me get down to the [...]
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Space Development, Space Policy on Feb 7th, 2008
For those who didn’t see it on Hobbyspace, I got interviewed yesterday by New Scientist about the recent LM/Bigelow announcement. All in all it was a pretty good article (though apparently we might need to update our website to reflect the fact that we haven’t been in Santa Clara for over a year and a [...]
Posted in Politics on Feb 4th, 2008
I really hate to bump such a good post as Ken’s last one from the top of the list (go read it if you haven’t had a chance yet), but I’ve been meaning to say something about this year’s Presidential election for some time now. Tomorrow’s primary day here in California (and about half of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 4th, 2008
Howdy all, guest blogger Ken here. I’ve promised a couple posts that have been on the back burner. One is on regolith, a complex topic that needs more exposure, but unfortunately one of the main resources I was going to use, NASA’s ‘Lunar e-Library’ uses some kind of proprietary Acrobat interface for searching the pdfs [...]