Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Space Tethers, Space Transportation, Technology on Dec 10th, 2009
So I’ve started out telling you that momentum-exchange tethers are great. Why? you might ask. Well, because a spinning momentum-exchange tether is capable of transferring a fair fraction of the orbital energy and angular momentum in its orbit to a payload in just a few minutes. That’s a pretty impressive trick. It gets even better [...]
Posted in Space Tethers, Space Transportation, Technology on Dec 3rd, 2009
Anyone who’s interested in going to the Moon ought to take a serious look at the technology of momentum-exchange tethers. My own interest began back in 1998, when as a summer intern on the X-33 program at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, I spent time after work trying to come up with a new lunar exploration [...]
Posted in Space Transportation, Technology on Dec 2nd, 2009
Kirk sent me the link to these yesterday, but I didn’t have time to blog them yet. These should hopefully give you a better idea of what we’re talking about. If you have time, the other videos on his youtube channel are pretty interesting as well (though I imagine some of them will be talked [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, Space Development, Technology on Nov 24th, 2009
One of the more interesting modules that was originally going to be part of ISS was the Japanese-built Centrifuge Accomodations Module (CAM). The CAM was designed to provide the facilities for testing the impact of reduced and hypergravity–over a range of 1 milligee up to 2 gees of acceleration–on various biological specimens. Tests on these [...]
Posted in Launch Vehicles, Orbital Access Methodologies, Technology on Nov 18th, 2009
Ok, I’ve been toying with another orbital access methodology, but I wasn’t sure whether to file it under Random Thoughts (which tend to be my more half-baked, far-out ideas) or with the rest of the Orbital Access Methodologies series (which I’ve tried to keep a lot more professional/high-brow). This idea is actually an offshoot of [...]
Posted in Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, Technology, Tuggery on Nov 18th, 2009
Earlier this summer, I stumbled on a fascinating paper while trying to find some quotes for my Space 2009 Propellant Depot paper. The paper I found, Boom Rendezvous Alternative Docking Approach, written by Joseph Bonnometti of MSFC, discussed an interesting alternative to the standard method of bringing spacecraft together. It also provided an interesting insight [...]
Posted in Administrivia, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, Technology on Nov 3rd, 2009
Ok, between the trip to DC for the awards ceremony on Thursday, and taking all of next week off for a long-needed vacation, I’m not quite out of the woods yet. But after that I want to get back into blogging. And I have a few topics I’d like to write about, but wanted to [...]
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 [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology on Jul 30th, 2009
Or at least that’s how Stephen Flemming put it on Twitter regarding Jeff Greason’s presentation at the Augustine Committee meeting today in Florida. To be fair, the rest of the subgroup also did an amazing job, especially Chris Chyba’s wrapup near the the end, where he made the case forcefully that becoming a spacefaring civilization [...]
Posted in Space Transportation, Technology, Tuggery on Jul 6th, 2009
This is just a short one that someone pointed out to me over the weekend. For spacecraft that have to do their own rendezvous and docking with say a space station or depot, you need an RCS capable of not just holding a stable attitude, but also providing translational control in all three axes. Ie [...]