Monthly Archives: May 2015

Taong Boondocks Post on Answers to Prayers

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

Tonight’s blog-a-day post, being a Sunday, is a religious piece on Taong Boondocks about answers to prayers. Once again, if you’re not interested in religious things, you might want to just come back tomorrow–I should have some more spacey goodness … Continue reading →

Posted in Religion | 2 Comments

RLV Markets Part IV: Why Small May Be Beautiful

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

With the progress SpaceX has been making with trying to recover their F9R first stage, and their concepts for Mars Colonial Transport, BFRs, and 4000 satellite constellations, a lot of the industry has been fixated on very larger RLVs. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Launch Vehicles, RLV Markets | 8 Comments

Why the Moon?

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

In spite of my interest in the Asteroid Redirect Mission, I’m still a firm believer that the Moon has a major role to play in space settlement. While Mars and Venus (at the cloud level) may have atmospheres more conducive … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Settlement, Space Transportation, Venus | 14 Comments

Random Thoughts: µ-xGRF

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

I’ve previously blogged a few times about Kirk Sorensen’s xGRF (variable Gravity Research Facility) concept as a way to answer the critical questions of how humans respond to hypogravity. Kirk’s concept involved a lab spacecraft and counterweight connected by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Random Thoughts, Space Tethers, Variable Gravity | 7 Comments

ICYMI: Prospector Demonstration Video

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

At work, Bill Bolton has been working on a movie of our Prospector demonstration (with enough annotations and captions to understand what is going on). I’ll be doing a more detailed blog post on the Altius Space Machines website sometime … Continue reading →

Posted in Altius Space Machines, NEOs | 4 Comments

Boomerang Air-Launched TSTO RLV Concept (Part I)

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

Back when I left Masten to start Altius, I originally thought I was starting a launch vehicle company focused on reusable nanosat launchers. While we pivoted away from that to focus on space robotics, I’ve continued to dabble with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Boomerang TSTO RLV, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Orbital Access Methodologies, Rocket Design Theory | 20 Comments

Peter Jeffris

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

While Memorial Day is technically a day to honor those who’ve died fighting for our country, this memorial day is also almost six months to the week since Altius lost a member of its small team, Peter Jeffris, to a … Continue reading →

Posted in Altius Space Machines, Friends | 5 Comments

My Mom’s Homeschool Training Site: Mentoring Our Own

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

I was talking with my parents tonight and realized that a good topic for a Sunday post would be to introduce my mom’s company’s new website: Mentoring Our Own. My mom’s company is about teaching and mentoring new homeschooling parents, … Continue reading →

Posted in Family, Homeschooling | 1 Comment

More EGT Musings: ISRU Propellants

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

One of the ideas I had been thinking of blogging about was the thought of augmenting EGT asteroid deflection with in-situ derived propellants. The gravitation attraction force is usually the bottleneck in how fast you can do an asteroid deflection, … Continue reading →

Posted in NEOs | 2 Comments

Random ULA Thoughts

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

[Disclaimer: My current company and former company have both done work with ULA. In fact, we just started another small IRAD project with ULA. We’ve also done work with SpaceX in the past, but our current work with ULA is … Continue reading →

Posted in Space Policy, ULA | 33 Comments