Doug Stanley, the notorious ESAS leader has said some strange things (this is his option three, one being Ares I and two Ares V):
Eliminating Ares 1 and 5 and all shuttle infrastructure could save NASA future costs that could eventually be applied towards exploration by significantly reducing the workforce and fixed infrastructure costs. This [...]
Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category
Doug Stanley Backs Depots
Posted in Architecture, Lunar, NASA, RLV:s, tagged Depot, Doug Stanley, EELV, NASA on Tuesday 2009.12.08 | Leave a Comment »
Be Careful When Starting Large Projects
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Transportation, airplane, industry, tagged Orlyonok, WIG on Monday 2009.12.07 | Leave a Comment »
Photos of a certain large Soviet ground effect vehicle.
Rutan / Beech Starship vs Piaggio Avanti
Posted in Architecture, industry, tagged Avanti, Canard, Piaggio, Rutan, Scaled Composites, Stall, Starship, Three Surface on Friday 2009.12.04 | Leave a Comment »
Starship (this is nice):
Avanti (this is boring and low quality):
Starship: First flight in february 1986. Powered by Pratt & Whitney PT6A-67A turboprops 895 kW each, designed by by Burt Rutan and Scaled composites, the maker of planes that fly around the world nonstop, or rocket planes that [...]
Minus 2D Boom Rendezvous
Posted in Architecture, Depot, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged ATV, Boom, Capture, Centaur, HTV, Rendezvous, RLV on Thursday 2009.12.03 | 2 Comments »
I always had a different idea compared to the one Jon and Kirk posted, (Kirk Sorensen is now a contributor at Jon Goff’s place, I’m afraid having such top men in the same place might cause a awesomity criticality event). I assume this idea is probably found in some old NASA report from the sixties [...]
Jeff Greason
Posted in Architecture, Colonization, Depot, ESA, JAXA, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, Spacecraft, industry, tagged NASA, Augustine, Depot, Greason on Thursday 2009.11.05 | Leave a Comment »
The Man. On Space Review. [EDIT: About a month ago, but I only just read it.] This is just excellent. So many things I agree with, that go against the stupid myths of spaceflight and space policy. If you read one space policy interview this year, this should be it!
“NASA is an organization that is [...]
NASA’s Mess
Posted in Architecture, Demotivation, industry, tagged ares i, Augustine, contractor, Danny Deger, ESAS, Federal Acquisition Regulations, ITAR, Rationality, SBU on Friday 2009.10.09 | Leave a Comment »
Danny Deger @ Nasaspaceflight.com forum on Ares I selection in ESAS (I don’t know if this is true, I have little knowledge about the matter):
The Ares data isn’t just ITAR, it is Sensitive But Unclassified as it should be to not expose criminal conduct. Yes that is right, all data that exposes any criminal [...]
Lunar Lander Challenge 2009
Posted in Architecture, Homebuilt, Lunar, Motivation, RLV:s, Suborbital, industry, tagged Armadillo, lunar lander challenge, Masten, rocket, Unreasonable on Wednesday 2009.09.16 | Leave a Comment »
Armadillo finally won L2 already.
Masten and Unreasonable are still flying for second place I think (I’m not 100% clear on the rules) today!
Spacetransportnews is the place to watch all this. (Or it has the links collected.)
It’s historical in a sense. These rockets will serve as the basis for reusable sounding rockets, possibly high altitude tourist [...]
JAXA’s HTV
Posted in Architecture, JAXA, Motivation, Spacecraft, tagged HTV, ISS, JAXA on Friday 2009.09.11 | Leave a Comment »
It’s in orbit currently. Status updates on spaceflight now and an NSF forum thread. There’s some technical material on NSF L2 about the HTV, for anyone there.
Hope all goes well. This is also exciting, if everything works, there are soon four space agencies that have docked to a space station – a few years ago [...]
Airline vs Spaceline Safety
Posted in Architecture, Homebuilt, RLV:s, Suborbital, Transportation, engines, industry, tagged Airline, Ethanol, Lynx, Methane, Safety, Suborbital, XCOR on Wednesday 2009.08.19 | 1 Comment »
62 mile club has a writeup of a beta “customer qualification program” for XCOR’s Lynx suborbital craft. This highlights the differences and current state of play. Rocketships will not be as safe as airliners in the near future, and they don’t need to be. There are millions of things that are less safe than airliners [...]
