Monthly Archives: May 2016

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes: Part 0–An Elevator Pitch for the Moon

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

[Note: After getting a few posts into this series on the “how” of alternative lunar transportation concepts, I realized that some commenters were asking about why we should even be going to the Moon, or what we’d be doing there. … Continue reading →

Posted in ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Settlement | 15 Comments

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes: Part 3–Intentional Hard Landings

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

The first advanced lunar transportation concept is the idea of intentional hard lithobraking landings of bulk raw materials. The idea was recently suggested by frequent Selenian Boondocks commenter Paul Dietz in the comments to this previous post. Basically you would … Continue reading →

Posted in ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes, Space Development, Space Settlement | 50 Comments

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes: Part 2–The Beachhead Analogy

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

This observation may already be bleedingly obvious to everyone else, but I feel it is worth explicitly stating: One of the top priorities of early missions to any destination in the solar system should be to drive down the cost … Continue reading →

Posted in ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Lunar Transportation Schemes, Space Settlement, Space Transportation | 30 Comments

Random Thoughts: ACES/EUS Public Private Partnership Idea

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

A few years ago, I did a “Random Thoughts” blog post about synergies between the proposed ACES stage and the proposed SLS upper stage. Now, I’m still not the world’s biggest SLS fan, and I’m still not a fan of … Continue reading →

Posted in Launch Vehicles, NASA, Random Thoughts, ULA | 10 Comments

Reusable Falcon Heavy payload (upper stage staging velocity)

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Chris Stelter

Jon and I were discussing the recent Falcon Heavy payload numbers. Expendable performance to GTO is supposed to be 22 tons (metric, same for the rest of this post). Given how aggressive that is, and given the history of Falcon … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments