Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, COTS, NASA, Space Development, Space Policy, SpaceX on Feb 25th, 2009
I think most in the commercial space industry would agree that COTS is one of the best things the government has done to help promote commercial space in a long time. While I think that overall this program has been run pretty well by government standards, some recent discussions on a few threads at NASASpaceflight.com [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 22nd, 2009
While calling home tonight to speak with my family (a weekly tradition in my family), I heard the sad news that Larry H Miller had passed away from complications to his Type II diabetes. Long-time readers may recognize his name from some of my business posts. Larry was a self-made billionaire, literally starting as a [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation on Feb 10th, 2009
[Update 2/10/09 11pm: I'm actually pretty sure I made a mistake here, and my entire idea may be more or less worthless. Basically, the problem is that for any elliptical trajectory, you have a "line of apsides", which basically is a line connecting the apogee and perigee. In order to have a good lunar transfer, [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 7th, 2009
Just wanted to mention that I have some space posts that will be coming up soon. If I didn’t have a 6am meeting tomorrow morning, I would’ve tried to put one together tonight, and I didn’t want to leave a politics post at the top of the list over the weekend. ~Jon
Am I the only one who notices the eerie similarities between the debate over the current “stimulus” bill and the run-up to the Iraq War? The same drumbeat of propaganda coming from the press. The same repeated warnings of imminent disaster from some quarters–if we don’t give the government the emergency powers it needs to [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 2nd, 2009
I heard this on aRocket, and thought it clever enough to warrant passing on. You’ve heard the old phase “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” A better way of looking at it was suggested by an aRocketeer’s professor: “If all you have is a hammer, find a way to [...]