Last year NASA put out a solicitation for companies to perform exploration architecture tradestudies incorporating Heavy Lift vehicles and potential advanced propulsion and in-space technologies. This was in support of NASA’s internal studies on the topic. I put a proposal in for that solicitation shortly after leaving Masten, but didn’t have enough credibility as a [...]
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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 [...]
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For those of you who aren’t reading our ASM Blog, I participated in a panel at the SSI Conference last week in San Jose. Dallas Bienhoff presented the paper we are working on coauthoring, Gary Hudson talked about earth-to-orbit transportation, and Joe Carroll talked about several other interesting technologies including: mid-air capture (which I’ve talked [...]
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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 [...]
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Over on the Space Business Blog, my good friend Colin Doughan has had a few posts discussing the concept of lunar land grants. While I haven’t had the time to read all of the comments, I do have to admit to having a few issues with the concept proposed: The land grant size proposed is [...]
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I’ve been meaning to write for a while about a rather fascinating, but not very well known, area of research that I think might have significant implications for several areas of space transportation. The research I am referring to is focused on exploiting Magneto-hydrodynamic forces to manipulate weakly-ionized plasmas caused by hypersonic flight in rarefied [...]
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I’ve had a few more ideas on the Lunar One-Way-To-Stay concept that I figured it would be worth posting now before I forget them. I still think this is pretty much the only way that there will be a human foot on the Moon this decade. More importantly, this is the only cost-effective way short [...]
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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. [...]
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If you’ve read enough space blogs, forums, and usenet groups, you’ve probably heard of the one-way-to-stay Mars mission, but what most people don’t realize is that in 1961 and ’62 such an approach was also seriously suggested and investigatedfor early lunar missions as well. While this may sound like a historical curiosity, I think the [...]
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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 [...]
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