Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
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 ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Settlement on Jan 15th, 2013
I don’t think this counts as my monthly blog post, mostly because I’m linking to and commenting on someone else’s blog post, but here goes. Michael Mealling (a fellow Masten Alumni gone entrepreneur) set out this year to do a blog post a day on his Rocketforge.org blog site. I really liked a post of [...]
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, Fun, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Space Development, Space Policy, Space Transportation on Apr 16th, 2012
On the way home from the Space Access 2012 conference yesterday, we drove by Meteor Crater, Arizona. I’m not much of a photographer, but I take pictures anyway. Here’s a few of my favorites: While I was standing there looking at this pretty darned impressive hole in the ground, I started thinking about Larry Niven’s [...]
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 Space Policy on Feb 9th, 2012
[Note: Here's a letter to the editor that I sent in to a local Colorado paper a few days ago, which didn't get published. Not that most of this should be too surprising to regular readers, but I figured it was worth putting something new on the blog. Also, some apologies on the terseness, I [...]
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 Launch Vehicles, NASA, Space Policy on Feb 18th, 2011
From NASAWatch/Spaceref: “While it is true that prudent investments in science and technology will almost certainly yield future economic gains and will allow our knowledge economy to grow, it is also true that these gains can be thwarted by poor decision-making,” Chairman Hall said. “Americans expect and deserve better. With our unemployment hovering at over [...]