Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 28th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
In my last couple of posts involving gravity turns, there seems to be some legitimate doubt whether useful maneuvers can be done with Lunar gravity turns. My numbers are quite different from those obtained by others and my methods are probably unacceptable for serious further debate. I believe there are some clear [...]
Posted in NASA on Sep 25th, 2009
Continuing my trend of outsourcing most of my blogging to others with more time on their hands, here’s a great question [from a guy named SpaceXULA] on NASASpaceflight.com:
You must ask yourself this question. “Given that NASA is national prestige program purely funded by deficit spending, do you feel a 30% increase in NASA’s budget, that [...]
Posted in MSS, Propellant Depots, Technology on Sep 19th, 2009
I only have a few minutes tonight, but part of what’s been keeping me busy lately has been two Space 2009 papers I’ve been involved with (one as the primary author, and another as a very minor coauthor).
First, the propellant depot paper I keep talking about: AIAA 2009-6756 Near-Term Propellant Depots: Implementation of a Critical [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 14th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
When posting about capturing an asteroid using a Lunar gravity turn, I realized that there is a very useful orbit there that I had not heard of. A station in retrograde orbit at altitudes similar to the moon but just different enough not to impact has a number of very attractive features.
A [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 13th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
Some time ago I learned that I could go to work for any Newspace company I wished, and work on any project I wanted to fund. So any contribution I make to this field before getting rich*, is probably going to be based on my ability to think of things that other [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 13th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
Many of my schemes bring to mind an old Far Side cartoon. Two filthy, scrawny convicts are hanging from their chains halfway up the dungeon wall. One of them says, “Now here’s my plan”. This post is another of the plans for the future that requires multiple steps before serious consideration. Like [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 12th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
During the discussions on the TAN concept, it turns out that the original invention requires some seriously difficult injection into the supersonic stream to avoid shock losses and other difficulties. Jon confirmed that there were problems, just not the ones I was thinking of. There does seem to be a simple way [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 6th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
I briefly got into another discussion about moving asteroids recently. It involved parking an eleven ton spacecraft next to the asteroid and letting the gravitational attraction between the two shift the asteroids orbit. Then when the spacecraft gets too close, use the thrusters to open the gap again. When I said that a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2009
guest blogger john hare
The potential problems I see with developing the original TAN concept could be quite wrong. If I am, I owe several people apologies upon proof. Whether I am or not though, the concept itself is obviously valuable. I am not dismissing the people that disagree with my take, just throwing more concepts [...]