Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in MSS on Jan 18th, 2010
Here’s an old video from our 195s tethered flight the day before our NGLLC Level 2 competition slot. Winds gusting past 30 knots, and it’s still rock solid. If you count tethered flights, I think it’s the longest duration VTVL flight ever (longer than DC-X or Armadillo):
It just goes to show that while every landing [...]
Posted in Administrivia, MSS on Dec 31st, 2009
Dave just wrote the latest Masten Update over on our MSS Project Blog. The update goes over some of our plans for the new year. Hopefully I’ll have something more to talk about soon.
Posted in MSS, Propellant Depots, Technology on Sep 19th, 2009
I only have a few minutes tonight, but part of what’s been keeping me busy lately has been two Space 2009 papers I’ve been involved with (one as the primary author, and another as a very minor coauthor).
First, the propellant depot paper I keep talking about: AIAA 2009-6756 Near-Term Propellant Depots: Implementation of a Critical [...]
Posted in Administrivia, MSS on Aug 25th, 2009
So, I got my big propellant depot paper done in time, but now I have some other stuff that will probably keep me from posting much for a while:
http://thelaunchpad.xprize.org/2009/08/2009-ngllc-first-attempts.html
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 MSS on May 8th, 2009
Posted in MSS on Jan 27th, 2009
Two more reasons I haven’t been blogging much lately:
Methinks I may be past-due for an MSS update…
Posted in MSS on Nov 13th, 2008
Did I mention we’ve been busy lately?
Posted in COTS, Commercial Space, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, MSS, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Transportation, Technology on Nov 6th, 2008
Here’s one other interesting paper, which was presented at the SPACE 2008 conference a few months ago. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was given a copy of a few of the ULA papers before the conference, but decided to wait until after the conference to write about it. The past [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, MSS on Jan 16th, 2007
Who says little boys are the only ones allowed to play around in the dirt?
Seriously though, we actually had a valid scientific reason for doing a test without the jet deflector in place. Honest.
We uhh…needed to know if a jet deflector was really necessary for testing, and if it was actually doing any good. [...]