Category Archives: Commercial Space

NASA’s Selection of the Blue Moon Lander for Artemis V

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Jonathan Goff

Last week, when NASA announced that they were picking Blue Origin’s National Team to develop a sustainable human lander for the Artemis V mission, what surprised me wasn’t the selection, but the fact that I’ve come around to really liking the decision. Continue reading →

Posted in Blue Origin, Commercial Space, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Reusable Lunar Landers, Space Transportation, SpaceX | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Random Thoughts: A Joint International Debris Remediation Effort

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Jonathan Goff

As humanity’s ambitions in space increase, one of the biggest potential risks to to those ambitions is the dangers caused by the debris we’ve left on orbit over the first half century of space development. Since Sputnik’s launch in October … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Orbital Debris Remediation/Mitigation, Random Thoughts, Satellite Servicing | 3 Comments

An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part VI: Roving Depots

Posted on February 22, 2021 by Jonathan Goff

In the last post in this series, I discussed the idea of large-scale depots for human spaceflight applications, which operate in fixed, low-orbits. While the final post in this series will investigate human spaceflight depots that operate in fixed higher … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, ISRU, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Exploration and Development, Mars, NASA, NEOs, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Transportation, ULA, Venus | 10 Comments

An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part V: Human Spaceflight Fixed Depots (Low-Orbit)

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Jonathan Goff

For this next depot taxonomy post, we’ll finally be talking about what people usually think about when they hear the term orbital propellant depot — larger, cryogenic refueling facilities, focused on enabling large-scale human spaceflight missions, performed by a diverse … Continue reading →

Posted in Blue Origin, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Mars, NEOs, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, RLV Markets, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Transportation, SpaceX, ULA, Venus | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy Part II: Distributed LEO Nano-Depots

Posted on September 16, 2020 by Jonathan Goff

For this first type of propellant depot, we have an idea that several of us seem to have independently realized. My company is developing a family of servicing tugs focused on servicing customers in Low Earth Orbit. We realized pretty … Continue reading →

Posted in Altius Space Machines, Commercial Space, Propellant Depots, Satellite Servicing | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

An Updated Propellant Depot Taxonomy

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Jonathan Goff

After way too many years in the wilderness, the concept of orbital propellant depots and in-space refueling in general, are finally beginning to be taken seriously again in public circles. A couple of examples include: Elon’s announcement that he is … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, ISRU, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Mars, NASA, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Transportation, Venus | Leave a comment

On Avoiding Some of the Mistakes of Apollo

Posted on July 21, 2019 by Jonathan Goff

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. With a blog named Selenian Boondocks, I figured it probably made sense for me to say something. Earlier this year, thanks to some good advice from several friends, I … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, COTS, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Exploration, Space Policy, Space Settlement | 21 Comments

FISO Telecon Lecture on LEO Propellant Depots for Interplanetary Smallsat Launch

Posted on November 28, 2018 by Jonathan Goff

Today I gave a lecture on the Future In-Space Operations Telecon Series on the idea of using LEO propellant depots for interplanetary smallsat missions. Here’s a link to the archive page, which has both the presentation itself and an .mp3 … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, Lunar Commerce, Mars, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, SpaceX, ULA | 6 Comments

AAS Paper Review: RAAN Agnostic 3-Burn Departure Methodology for Deep Space Missions from LEO Depots (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Jonathan Goff

Ok, picking up where the first part left off, we’ve reviewed the background, methodology, and some general observations on the methodology from our RAAN-agnostic 3-burn departure paper. In this part, I want to go over an interplanetary launch campaign concept … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Exploration and Development, Mars, NEOs, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, Technology, ULA, Venus | 5 Comments

Random Thoughts: Throwing the Moon a Bone

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

[Note: This blog post was originally planned to be something significantly longer, triggered by one of Eric Berger’s recent Ars Technica articles. But running a bootstrapped startup gave me the choice of waiting until this was totally irrelevant, or saying … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Crew, Commercial Space, COTS, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Random Thoughts | 9 Comments