Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in NASA on Apr 23rd, 2013
I made the mistake of reading about a Senate Commerce “hearing” held today regarding NASA’s human spaceflight plans. While some of the points made I actually agree with, one of the witnesses (Steve Cook of Dynetics) made an argument that I think merits some skepticism. The argument, which you’ve likely seen a lot recently, goes [...]
I’ve been following the various twists and turns in NASA and private interest in NEOs for a few years, ever since the Flexible Path concept was suggested by the Augustine Committee. While I’ve always been of the opinion that the Moon makes the most sense of all the potential off-earth bodies to settle and develop, [...]
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 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 NASA, Space Policy on Aug 13th, 2012
I’ve noticed a meme over the past years that NASA would be able to accomplish more if it didn’t keep getting its direction changed every time a new President comes in, or every time there is a shakeup in Congress. A strong corollary to this meme seems to be that these changes (and the accompanying [...]
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 ITAR, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Space Transportation on Jun 24th, 2011
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 [...]
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 [...]
Posted in NASA, Snark, Space Exploration on Feb 22nd, 2011
Here’s another fun, somewhat provocative comment, made by a member of aRocket: All of this discussion assumes that space exploration is, of itself, a valuable goal. As I see it, the only real deliverable of space exploration is that it keeps that VERY SMALL percentage of the population not content with beer and football entertained. [...]