Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 30th, 2008
guest blogger john hare Once a vehicle is in orbit, a high thrust to weight engine becomes a convenience rather than a necessity. For orbital transfer, Isp becomes far more important due to the cost of delivering propellant to orbit. Nuclear thermal seems like a good compromise between thrust to weight and Isp except for [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 27th, 2008
guest blogger john hare One of the problems with the toroid tank based vehicle is that it looks like a UFO. Let’s just call it a saucer and beat the comedians to the punch. Three main objections came up in comments on the torus tanks. The large surface to volume ratio could result in more [...]
Posted in Space Policy, Uncategorized on Oct 25th, 2008
guest blogger john hare [Saturday afternoon post change. Argh. While replying to Marcus, I realized that this post could be considered Monday Morning Quarterbacking at its' worst considering the loss just experienced by Armadillos' team. I respect that team and consider the members I have met as friends. This post is bad timing that I put [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 22nd, 2008
guest blogger john hare Compensating nozzles would be useful if they can be done affordably. Affordable is not only the cost to fabricate a nozzle, but also the risk of pursuing things that don’t work, and the time and money to develop it to operational status. Years behind the competition due to excessive chasing chimeras of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 20th, 2008
guest blogger john hare The ability to refuel in space is one of the critical technologies for opening up the high frontier. Without the ability to refuel in microgravity, destinations will be restricted to either low DeltaV missions or planets with in situ refueling capabilities. Any high DeltaV missions will have to be extremely valuable with [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 17th, 2008
Air breathing engines are virtually useless for the acceleration mission of a spacecraft. Fairly simple math demonstrates their lack of utility again and again. Any real air breathing engine (ABE) has a limited mach range and large weight compared to a rocket engine performing the same acceleration job. Turbojets work from mach 0 to 3 and [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Oct 16th, 2008
Tiff goes in for a minor surgery tomorrow. It’s a routine procedure Tiff needs to have done each time we’re expecting, but I figured that there are enough people who read this blog who know Tiff, that I figured it was worth mentioning it. Tomorrow should hopefully be a very boring and uneventful day for [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 14th, 2008
guest blogger john hare The VTVL vs HTHL vs VTHL arguments will probably never end. Many people simply cannot admit that different methods fit different requirements. That I prefer HTHL myself is not a compelling argument for the method. It does mean that I will look for ways to support my preference. The number one [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 10th, 2008
Jon mentioned that I argue pumps over pressure fed. That is partially because the first thing I tried to do seriously in rocketry was build a pump for some friends for a project in Huntsville. I started with the base assumption that turbo-pumps were just too hard and something different was needed. I built a series of [...]
Posted in Business, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, RLV Markets, Space Development, Space Transportation on Oct 9th, 2008
Now that I’ve wrapped up my Orbital Access Methodologies series, I wanted to share some thoughts about the business and market development side of reusable space transportation. Some of this may be old-hat for many of you, but I figured there are probably some who will find this useful and interesting. I was originally going [...]