Monthly Archives: March 2007

Centennial Challenges

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

One of the talks given at Space Access last week, by Ken Davidian, was rather informative. Ken’s a contractor working with NASA on running the Centennial Challenges program. Now, I’m kind of biased toward the Centennial Challenges, I work for … Continue reading →

Posted in NASA, Space Policy | 8 Comments

Much Better

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

Sorry that I haven’t had much of the will to blog lately. It’s not that I’ve been too busy, just that I needed to recuperate a bit after the last several weeks. Anyhow, I wanted to link to the much … Continue reading →

Posted in Space Policy | 5 Comments

The Next 50 Years: A Commentary

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

Earlier this morning an interesting article by Michael Griffin was posted at NASASpaceFlight.com in the L2 section. Apparently it was meant for Aviation Week, as it appeared on their blog there tonight (NASAWatch provided the link), which also means it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunar Commerce, NASA, Space Policy | 16 Comments

ESAS Thoughts

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

A recent comment on Space Politics got me thinking about ESAS again. I realized that I’m probably one of the most vocal ESAS critics in the blogosphere, and figured that it would therefore be worth trying to summarize a couple … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunar Commerce, NASA, Space Policy | 1 Comment

More Thoughts on the Lunar Much Sooner Architecture

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

I did some tweaking of my Lunar Much Sooner architecture. The latest numbers are available here. The original post about this architecture can be found here. I’m still basing this on existing rockets and stages (with the only modification being … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunar Commerce, NASA | 2 Comments

Cool Picture

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

I was just looking at the SpaceX site, seeing if there was any new info about their upcoming launch, when I stumbled across this picture of a hotfire test of their Merlin-1C regeneratively cooled engine. According to a recent article … Continue reading →

Posted in Launch Vehicles | 5 Comments

Random Thought: RS-68 Inflatable Nozzle

Posted on March 9, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

It’s interesting how you can hear a part of an idea, file it away in the back of your brain, and then all of the sudden have something pop into your mind months later. A couple of months ago, my … Continue reading →

Posted in Launch Vehicles | 8 Comments

Congrats to the ULA Team

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

I got home just in time to catch the liveblogging of the Atlas V STP-1 launch tonight. As several others have already pointed out, this launch was fairly important because it carried the Orbital Express satellite into orbit. Orbital Express … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Tip Jar?

Posted on March 8, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

I’ve been thinking a lot about this year’s ISDC which is coming up. I’d like to go for several reasons. One, I’d like to see what ISDC is like. Each space conference seems to have its own flavor, and attracts … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Some Launch Economics

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Jonathan Goff

A commenter on my post about Soyuz launches from Kourou raised the question of whether launch prices would really drop with an increase in flight rate. This question may be due to discussions about a report prepared for NASA by … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Economics, Launch Vehicles | 10 Comments