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 [...]
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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 [...]
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[Ed: I'm pretty sure I've used this argument before, but didn't see it on the blog, so I figured I'd put it down in writing even if it ends up being repetitive.]
One of the most common criticisms I hear of propellant depots is that we can’t “put unproven technology on the critical path to our [...]
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[Update 2/10/09 11pm: I'm actually pretty sure I made a mistake here, and my entire idea may be more or less worthless. Basically, the problem is that for any elliptical trajectory, you have a "line of apsides", which basically is a line connecting the apogee and perigee. In order to have a good [...]
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I’ve written a lot about the technical and business implications of propellant depots, and I realized I ought to discuss some of my thoughts on the the public policy side of propellant depots.
On one hand, I think that propellant depots could probably be fielded eventually without any specific government assistance. On many levels I dislike [...]
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As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I wanted to paint the overall picture first, and then flesh out the details as time and interest permits. For this post, I want to discuss an interesting lander concept that could work well with the mission model I discussed in Part I. [...]
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I don’t know for sure what it is, but I just don’t have a lot of mental bandwidth anymore these days. I’ve realized that I don’t have as much time or energy to pour over all the details of an idea before posting. Especially when a lot of these ideas may be a [...]
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Space Journalist/Blogger Rob Coppinger wrote an article tonight attempting to debunk “The Fantasy of Propellant Depots“, which he makes out to be some sort of religious mantra in the New Space community. I will admit that depots are finally starting to get a tiny bit of the attention they deserve, but that has only been [...]
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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 [...]
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There were a few interesting papers being presented at the Space 2008 conference that some of my friends at ULA sent me. I’m going to wait until after the conference is over, so I don’t steal their thunder, but they are worth a quick review when I have the time. One of the regards the [...]
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