Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Commercial Crew, Commercial Space, COTS, NASA, Space Policy, Space Safety, Space Transportation on Mar 2nd, 2013
There’s been a lot of discussion over the past year or two on a few blogs (this one, Transterrestrial Musings, and also Wayne Hale’s blog, among several others) about the proper level of emphasis on crew safety for commercial crew vehicles. The basic thesis that I and several of these other bloggers have made was [...]
Posted in Business, Commercial Space, Suborbital Science on Jan 17th, 2013
This isn’t meant to be a treatise on the topic, but an article yesterday on Citizens In Space about the benefits of Human-Tended experiments got me thinking about a chain of thought I’ve been meaning to write about for many years. I actually agree with the conclusion that in many cases human-tending of experiments is [...]
Posted in Administrivia, Altius Space Machines, Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, COTS, Excuses for Light Blogging, ISRU, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Exploration and Development, MHD Aerobraking and TPS, Space Settlement, Space Transportation, SpaceX, Technology, Venus on Jan 1st, 2013
Last month, while in the middle of a technical writing project for work, I tweeted a list of a few blog posts I wanted to write sometime in the near future, and asked some friends to nag me occasionally until I actually write some of them. Since none of them have been nagging me recently, [...]
Posted in Commercial Crew, Commercial Space, NASA, Space Policy, Space Safety on Sep 25th, 2012
I realized I already made several of my points about the overemphasis of “safety” for NASA’s commercial crew program back in March, but I heard a recent line that helped me better understand what may be driving this. This probably isn’t that brilliant of an observation, but it helped me. I was talking with a [...]
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 [...]