Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in NASA, Space Development, Space Exploration on Jan 31st, 2011
I know all of you have been just dying to hear what I think about the Nautilus-X MMSEV vehicle that’s been discussed all over the blogosphere in recent days. Ok, probably not, but I figured I ought to get my opinions on record anyway. I’ll start with my positive impressions first. Most importantly, I like [...]
Posted in Propellant Depots on Jan 31st, 2011
I was somewhat surprised that my earlier Dual-Fluid Depot post generated as much interest as it did. I didn’t think there were many people who cared about depots who hadn’t read any of the papers by Frank Zegler, Bernard Kutter, or myself on the topic. But I wanted to include an intro just for sake [...]
Posted in Space Exploration on Jan 28th, 2011
The video presentation of the TechTalk I gave at Google on January 13th is available:
Posted in Propellant Depots on Jan 21st, 2011
[Note: Welcome AIAA Daily Launch readers! Feel free to check out other posts on propellant depots, as well as the Altius Space Machines blog where I talk about what my current company is up to.] I was going to write a short post today about a variant on the Dual-Fluid, Single-Launch Propellant Depot idea, when [...]
Posted in NASA on Jan 17th, 2011
If they follow through with their intent mentioned earlier today to try and force an honest competition for the SLS booster system, that’s great news. One of my single biggest pet peeves about CxP was that NASA, behind closed doors, and without open input from industry (other than ATK) comes up with a plan that [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, ESAS, NASA, NEOs, Propellant Depots on Jan 13th, 2011
So, most of you in the space policy world have heard about NASA’s report back to Congress about how it wants to build an Ares-V classic HLV, but that Congress wasn’t giving them enough time or money, and Congress’ dignified response that “Nu Uh! You can too!” That exchange was annoying, but utterly predictable. What [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Jan 10th, 2011
This last week ended a rather crazy, but rewarding, year for me personally. Just a quick recap on what’s been going on my goofy world over the past year (some dates approximate–my current Journal only goes back to Apr 28th, and I haven’t found my box with older ones): Late Dec 2009/Apr 2010 — Was [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 9th, 2011
If some investigation is done that supports the use of a high rpm/small diameter module to promote health, then the question of cost and schedule becomes important. I think an early economical method might be to reuse an expendable upper stage that would otherwise burn up on reentry. Depending on what upper stages are available to a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 2nd, 2011
One of the sticking point of long duration missions to other planets is the bone and muscle loss during extended periods in free fall. Using very small centrifuges to simulate gravity has the problem of causing motion sickness with 3 rpms being the accepted limit for selected humans. 10 rpms is considered impossible for anyone to adjust to [...]