Category Archives: NEOs

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

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

AAS Paper Review: RAAN Agnostic 3-Burn Departure Methodology for Deep Space Missions from LEO Depots (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on September 15, 2018 by Jonathan Goff

About a year ago, I wrote a review of an AAS conference paper that I coauthored with a few of my astrogator friends, Mike Loucks and John Carrico regarding an mission design tool for enabling the use of LEO depots … Continue reading →

Posted in Launch Vehicles, NEOs, Orbital Dynamics, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation | 9 Comments

ESIL-8 Elements of Lunar Commerce Presentation

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Jonathan Goff

I was invited to give a talk on lunar commerce at a Emerging Space Industry Leaders workshop last week hosted by ULA at their Centennial, Colorado campus, and put on by my friends at Advanced Space LLC and the FAA … Continue reading →

Posted in Altius Space Machines, Business, Commercial Space, ISRU, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, MHD Aerobraking and TPS, NASA, NEOs, Propellant Depots, Space Development, Space Settlement, Space Transportation, SpaceX, Technology, ULA, Variable Gravity | 36 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

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

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

Additional EGT Musings: Gravity Tractor and Enhanced Gravity Tractor Overview

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

[Editor’s Note: When I posted the Enhanced Gravity Tractor article earlier in the week, I didn’t have time to really dig into the concept the way I had originally intended. Josh Hopkins suggested on Twitter that I could cheat and … Continue reading →

Posted in NEOs | 13 Comments

Enhanced Gravity Tractor Paper at the IAA Planetary Defense Conference

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

I’ve noticed that very few people seem to understand the concept of the Enhanced Gravity Tractor planetary defense technique that the ARM Option B approach plans on demonstrating. A friend recently forwarded me a great paper describing this concept that … Continue reading →

Posted in NEOs | 5 Comments