Category Archives: Space Policy

Fill ‘er Up: New AIAA Aerospace America Article on Propellant Depots

Posted on September 2, 2022 by Jonathan Goff

I was interviewed by John Kelvey for an article on propellant depots, which AIAA just published in this month’s Aerospace America magazine. Here’s an online version of the article for those of you who don’t get the print edition. Also … Continue reading →

Posted in Propellant Depots, Space Policy, Space Transportation | Leave a comment

Starbright Response to ISAM National Strategy RFC

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Jonathan Goff

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m going to be providing links here to relevant blog posts on my Starbright Engineering LLC blog. This first link is to a comment I submitted to the Office of Science and Technology … Continue reading →

Posted in Satellite Servicing, Space Policy, Starbright | 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

Random Thought: NASA Externships as an Alternative to “Training-Wheels” Intramural R&D?

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

[Here’s one last draft I’ve found to polish off–this one only from a year ago. It’s a little bit of a touch subject–I’m not trying to denigrate what the NASA teams mentioned in this post were doing, just trying to … Continue reading →

Posted in NASA, Random Thoughts, Space Policy | 6 Comments

SLS, Shuttle, and The Danger of the “No Payloads” Argument

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Jonathan Goff

I’m not a particularly big fan of NASA’s SLS. Anyone paying attention with even a shred of self-honesty can tell that two of the primary reasons why Congress forced NASA to build SLS were to preserve and enlarge payrolls at … Continue reading →

Posted in NASA, Space Exploration, Space Policy | 16 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

Healthy Industries vs. Monocultures

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Jonathan Goff

One of the things I’ve believed for a long time is that for the NewSpace industry to be successful and healthy, that we need to see multiple providers and customers for the various goods and services in the industry. One … Continue reading →

Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Crew, Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Space Policy, SpaceX | 17 Comments

Certification and Rules-based Technology Regulations: Part of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Jonathan Goff

Brian Wang over on Next Big Future brought up a point I’ve been thinking about for a while. In an article about why Canada is likely to beat the US to having molten salt nuclear reactors (in spite of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Crew, Space Policy, Space Safety | 6 Comments

Penny for NASA (Centennial Challenges)

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Jonathan Goff

I remember the first time I was exposed to the fact that NASA gets less than 1% of the federal budget, and the suggestion that we could do so much more awesome stuff if NASA just got 1% of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Space, NASA, Prizes, Space Policy | 16 Comments

A Modest Proposal: the COTS Approach to SLS/Orion

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Jonathan Goff

I came up with an interesting new idea based on the recent press conferences about the successful completion of NASA’s COTS program, Bigelow’s report on the study they did on commercial lunar development, and the SLS/Orion developers discussion of “Removing … Continue reading →

Posted in Commercial Crew, COTS, Launch Vehicles, NASA, Politics, Space Exploration, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology | 22 Comments