Author Archives: Kirk Sorensen

About Kirk Sorensen

MS, nuclear engineering, University of Tennessee, 2014, Flibe Energy, president, 2011-present, Teledyne Brown Engineering, chief nuclear technologist, 2010-2011, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, aerospace engineer, 2000-2010, MS, aerospace engineering, Georgia Tech, 1999

Star Trek 2 should have led to a court-martial

Posted on August 16, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

I really love Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. I have loved it since I was a kid, but if you watch it closely, Admiral Kirk makes a series of decisions that would end his career in a real … Continue reading →

Posted in Movie Review | Leave a comment

Human colonies floating in the clouds of Venus

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

Last time I talked about how successful human colonies would likely need to begin with an existing culture. This time I’d like to talk about one of the places that humans might wish to colonize, and it is the first … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Colonies on Mars require more than engineering

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

Elon Musk talks about a city on Mars the way a developer talks about a new subdivision outside Phoenix. The engineering problems are hard, but they are the kind of hard we know how to attack: get there cheaply, make … Continue reading →

Posted in Mars, Religion, Space Settlement, Venus | 9 Comments

Apollo Manned Venus Flyby retrospective

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

In February 1967, five Bellcomm engineers completed a 177-page study showing that a manned Venus flyby was feasible with a single Saturn V and Apollo hardware. Nobody flew it. But every engineering conclusion they reached applies, with interest, to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Manned Circumnavigation of the Inner Solar System

Posted on April 27, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

In 1969, a Bellcomm engineer named A. A. VanderVeen published a paper describing a family of trajectories so elegant they seem almost accidental. Fifty-five years later, the most attractive instance of that trajectory family departs Earth in August 2034. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, Mars, Orbital Dynamics, Space Exploration, Space Tethers, Variable Gravity | 7 Comments

Lunar Space Elevator Design

Posted on April 23, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

The previous posts in this series described what the lunar space elevator can do. This one works through the structural mechanics that determine how much ribbon material you actually need to build it. The central engineering question for any space … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Space Development, Space Tethers, Space Transportation | 3 Comments

Revisiting LUNOX and an ISRU critique

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

There’s a particular NASA mission concept from 1993 that deserves more attention than it gets, and a 2007 critique of lunar in-situ resource utilization that deserves to be read alongside it. Taken together, they map out why lunar ISRU has … Continue reading →

Posted in ESAS, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Space Transportation | 5 Comments

Queqiao, first use of the powered lunar swingby

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

In 2006, no one had flown the powered lunar swingby to EML2. In 2018, the Chinese did it, and they cited Farquhar while they were doing it. For 20 years I’ve been entranced by the astrodynamic advantages of the Earth-Moon … Continue reading →

Posted in ESAS, Lunar Exploration and Development, Orbital Dynamics | Leave a comment

EML2 Lunar Elevator Introduction

Posted on April 17, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

The first two posts in this series made the case for staging lunar missions at EML2 and for building a permanent station there. This one describes where that architecture ultimately leads — and it’s more extraordinary than most people have … Continue reading →

Posted in Space Tethers | 2 Comments

Gateway is gone, do we need a lunar station?

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Kirk Sorensen

NASA just canceled the Lunar Gateway — the first space station ever planned for EML2. That’s worth reflecting on, because the case for a station at that location has never been stronger. In my previous post I laid out the … Continue reading →

Posted in ESAS, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Reusable Lunar Landers, Space Development | Leave a comment