Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Altius Space Machines, Business, Commercial Space on Sep 17th, 2010
A couple of months ago, I came to a realization that many of the “gaps” impeding space commercialization could be profitably targeted right now, instead of having to develop everything in series, boostrapping up from suborbital RLVs. While the evolutionary approach is still a valid one, several of the key missing puzzle pieces, such as [...]
Posted in Altius Space Machines, Commercial Space on Sep 14th, 2010
[Before I try and end the speculation about what it is we're trying to accomplish at Altius, I wanted to give some thoughts about where I think things could go over the next 25-30 years. I think everyone who reads this probably has their own unique vision, but this is to give you an idea [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Space Development on Jul 24th, 2010
I saw on twitter that Alex MacDonald’s paper on comparing the private funding of astronomical observatories and space exploration is finally up. It’s a fascinating read. I met Alex at New Space conference last year, and he showed me some of his research. His hypothesis is that astronomical observatories were the “space exploration” of the [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, MSS, NASA, Space Transportation on May 25th, 2010
I had to keep this under wraps until this morning, but it’s now formal: May 25th, 2010, Mojave, CA, USA: XCOR Aerospace and Masten Space Systems, two of the leaders in the New Space sector, have announced a strategic business and technology relationship to pursue jointly the anticipated NASA sponsored unmanned lander projects. These automated [...]
Posted in Commercial Space on May 24th, 2010
Jeff, who happens to be in a really good position to know, clears up a common misconception about the Futron Space Tourism study that I’ve seen made a lot of places (including in the comments section here): This author, being intimately familiar with the forecast, can shed some light on that forecast. A common misconception [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Propellant Depots, RLV Markets on Apr 29th, 2010
It’s been a rather interesting month so far, and I’ve been under a bit too much stress lately to blog much, but I wanted to put up some of the presentations from the Propellant Depot panel I was on at Space Access this year. If I had found the time sooner I would also say [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Politics, Snark, SpaceX on Mar 2nd, 2010
I predict that regardless of the outcome of SpaceX’s inaugural Falcon 9 launch, nobody is going to change their opinion. If it’s successful, Ares-huggers will suddenly begin to understand the concept that a single successful flight doesn’t prove anything about a vehicle’s overall reliability (while most on the pro-commercial space guys will start sounding like [...]
Posted in Business, Commercial Space, Suborbital Science on Feb 13th, 2010
Last year, my family went out to the coast to spend the holiday with a good friend who does finance and project management work for a large aerospace company out there. We’ve been brainstorming various space business opportunities for some time to see if there were any interesting areas that we could both make money [...]
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Space Development, Space Transportation on Jan 21st, 2010
The more I think about the Lunar One-Way-to-Stay concept, the more intriguing it is. Fundamentally, it’s one of the only ways with existing transportation systems to get the cost of early lunar experimentation anywhere near low-enough to be useful and interesting. Ultimately, for thriving two-way cislunar commerce, you need tugs, and depots, and high-flightrate RLVs. [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Politics, Space Development, Space Policy on Dec 14th, 2009
Amid all the recent discussion of the Augustine Committee’s results, Mark Whittington asks a question that a lot of people in Congress seem to be asking: “Why not just pay for the current program since any new program is going to cost more money anyway?” To elaborate, the line of reasoning goes that if the [...]