Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Administrivia, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Suborbital Science on Apr 16th, 2012
I’m still in the process of recuperating from Space Access and the long drive home from Phoenix, but I wanted to give a few thoughts on this year’s conference. I’ve now been going to Space Access for a full decade (other than 2009, when Tiff was within a week of her due-date for Peter), so [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Fun, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Transportation on Apr 16th, 2012
On the way home from the Space Access 2012 conference yesterday, we drove by Meteor Crater, Arizona. I’m not much of a photographer, but I take pictures anyway. Here’s a few of my favorites: While I was standing there looking at this pretty darned impressive hole in the ground, I started thinking about Larry Niven’s [...]
Posted in Administrivia, Business, Commercial Space, Entrepreneurship on Apr 4th, 2012
It takes slightly crazy people to make big changes. These same people generally have tough lives. It’s a lifestyle choice. –Iain McClatchie (who runs the Ambivalent Engineer blog)
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, NASA, Space Policy on Mar 30th, 2012
[Note: I just wanted to share a quick semi-baked opinion, and it was long enough that if I broke it up into a series of tweets, Ben Brockert and Will Pomerantz would probably remind me of this blog thing I supposedly run...It's probably not that new, profound, or even correct, but as I said, think [...]
Posted in Business, Commercial Space, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Law, Space Policy on Jun 10th, 2011
I finally got around to watching Jeff Greason’s ISDC talk last night (youtube link here), and it has got me thinking. In an effort to actually get some blog posts going again, I’m going to break this up into chunks to try and keep things short. Jeff made the point that you can look at [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Policy on May 25th, 2011
Keith Cowing posted an interesting notice over on SpaceRef today. Basically NASA is using authority in one bill to remove a restriction in their acquisition regulations on doing “anchor tenant” type contracts. Anchor tenancy agreements have been talked about in the past as a way of making it easier to close the business case on [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Propellant Depots on Apr 5th, 2011
Sorry things have been so quiet on my end. With how busy work has been keeping me lately, I have had very little time for blogging, but wanted to let people know that I’ll be joining Dan Adamo (former FIDO for NASA JSC) and Drs. John Jurist and Jim Logan to discuss propellant depots. The [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Technology on Mar 21st, 2011
I’ve been too busy to do much blogging lately, but I just saw this on twitter a bit over an hour ago: XCOR and ULA Demonstrate Revolutionary Rocket Engine Nozzle Technology, and wanted to make some comments. First off, I wanted to congratulate my friends at XCOR and ULA. This engine work that ULA and [...]
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, Commercial Space on Sep 24th, 2010
Just saw the news that Wayne Hale (of Space Shuttle operations fame) has a new blog up on wordpress. Wayne’s blog posts while still at NASA were always informative, and I hope now that he’s out in the private sector, he’ll be able to continue that trend. As I understand it, Wayne left NASA earlier [...]