Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, NASA, SpaceX on Dec 3rd, 2009
I didn’t have a chance to watch either of the House subcommittee hearings today, so I’m grateful that Clark linked to the testimonies of the various witnesses. I really enjoyed reading Brett’s testimony, and thought one of his points in particular is worth repeating. To me one of the more interesting points is found at [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Space Transportation, Thrust Augmented Nozzles on Dec 2nd, 2009
I want to clean out some of the Skribit suggestions that I’ve been neglecting for a while. Some of these may end up somewhat brief, but I wanted to at least try to be responsive. Drop Tanks to Enable SSTO? I don’t like drop tanks. While they do definitely make the rest of the SSTO [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, Orbital Access Methodologies, Technology on Nov 18th, 2009
Ok, I’ve been toying with another orbital access methodology, but I wasn’t sure whether to file it under Random Thoughts (which tend to be my more half-baked, far-out ideas) or with the rest of the Orbital Access Methodologies series (which I’ve tried to keep a lot more professional/high-brow). This idea is actually an offshoot of [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, RLV Markets, Space Transportation on Jul 30th, 2009
In light of how well today went at the Augustine Committee, I felt that it would be worthwhile to post the propellant depot white paper that a group of us submitted last week. I was originally planning a much longer paper, trying to make the case that depots were technologically mature enough to be worth [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology on Jul 30th, 2009
Or at least that’s how Stephen Flemming put it on Twitter regarding Jeff Greason’s presentation at the Augustine Committee meeting today in Florida. To be fair, the rest of the subgroup also did an amazing job, especially Chris Chyba’s wrapup near the the end, where he made the case forcefully that becoming a spacefaring civilization [...]
Posted in ESAS, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA on Jul 29th, 2009
Just reading some of the comments from the Constellation used-car sale pitch going on in Huntsville today. One of the topics discussed was how Ares-V enables manned missions to Mars. The Marshall guys put up a chart showing that depending on whether we go with NTRs or chemical propulsion, Ares-V could place the needed mass [...]
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, MSS, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, SpaceX on Jun 28th, 2009
Ok, two weeks ago, I mentioned that the “pre-depot” dual EELV launch concept my friend had passed to me could be adapted to do manned lunar missions. Lunar missions are a lot easier to close if you assume a depot in LEO (and even easier if there’s also a small depot at L2). But it [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, NASA on Jun 24th, 2009
With yet another episode of “let’s-just-quote-Jorge-Frank-because-he-puts-it-so-much-better-than-I-could”. In response to a comment about how the problem with Shuttle was that it tried to be everything to everyone, Jorge said: That was an effect, not a cause. The cause was the decision to make the shuttle an operational, rather than an experimental vehicle. This was key. An [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation on Jun 17th, 2009
I noticed during the DIRECT presentation at today’s HSF public meeting, that they were asked why they would need an HLV if they had depots. Now, I didn’t hear the exact question, since I had a phone call come in just a few minutes earlier (ironically enough from one of my friends in the depot [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, NASA, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Transportation on May 26th, 2009
I’ve been busy a lot lately (between this, this, this, and having friends in from out of town for the holiday), so I hadn’t had a chance until now to reply to Mark Whittington’s correspondence with me (found here). A majority of his reply was arguing against stuff that I had never said, or making [...]