Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in NASA, Snark, Space Exploration on Feb 22nd, 2011
Here’s another fun, somewhat provocative comment, made by a member of aRocket: All of this discussion assumes that space exploration is, of itself, a valuable goal. As I see it, the only real deliverable of space exploration is that it keeps that VERY SMALL percentage of the population not content with beer and football entertained. [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, NASA, Space Policy on Feb 18th, 2011
From NASAWatch/Spaceref: “While it is true that prudent investments in science and technology will almost certainly yield future economic gains and will allow our knowledge economy to grow, it is also true that these gains can be thwarted by poor decision-making,” Chairman Hall said. “Americans expect and deserve better. With our unemployment hovering at over [...]
Posted in ITAR, Politics, Space Policy on Feb 16th, 2011
I know I’ve written about this topic before, but I think it’s worth bringing it up again. When you combine the stupidity of ITAR as it exists with the difficulty of getting even a green-card for your typical foreign engineering student studying in the US, you get a particularly pathetic situation. While they’re in school, [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, NASA, Space Development on Feb 3rd, 2011
So, according to Rob Coppinger, USA has proposed to operate the Shuttle “commercially” as part of their CCDEV proposal. For a cool, $1.5B/yr over the next six years, they’ll provide two shuttle flights per year. Personally, I think this is mostly a terrible idea. While offering fixed-price services, and moving to FAA regs is nice, [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 2nd, 2011
Wow. Selenian Boondocks officially passed the 400,000 site visits mark sometime this afternoon. For a blog mostly focused on such a small niche topic (space technology, politics, and business), it’s kind of cool to reach a milestone like this. Thanks everyone for all the support, especially when the blogging ends up being so light sometimes! [...]
Posted in NASA, Politics, Snark, Space Policy, SpaceX on Feb 1st, 2011
So, a group of rocket engineers starts making claims about how they’re going to revolutionize the industry and deliver a vehicle for far less than has been the traditional norm. When asked how they are going to do this, they talk about stuff like “vertical integration”, “keeping stuff simple”, using a “clean-sheet approach”, and “borrowing [...]
Posted in Administrivia on Feb 1st, 2011
FWIW, there’s new blog posts on what we’ve been up to at ASM over the last few months, and on some validation on our concept for doing an ISS micro reentry vehicle.