Some assorted NewSpace 2013 inspired thoughts that I want to put up while they are still fresh and go into more detail in future posts:  Public Perception/Personal Connection – as much as I would like to be wrong, I believe that a most people feel little connection to space.  When... [Read More]

A short post today due to:  A)   Having a lot of fun tuning the control gains on the MTF (microgravity test facility – the official acronym even though I’d rather call it the MTA: microgravity test assembly), that now has vaguely working feedback.  There’s something very satisfying about the ability... [Read More]

I’m a big fan of using things for purposes other than those intended by their creators. I’ve used Legos as a reconfigurable experimental setup, a firecracker case as an electronic Palantir, and cardboard for pretty much everything except packing things (ok, I’ve used it to pack things too.) People repurposing is... [Read More]

Considering how prevalent it is, converting analog data (ie. the real world) to digital form is a piece of our technological portfolio that is still surprisingly difficult to get right.  As much as some CS majors may like to ignore it, computers that interact with the real world need to... [Read More]

As a side effect of spending a lot of time yakking about the future of space exploration, I encounter many pessimistic outlooks on private space flight. One of those most common explanations for this pessimism is: “Most of the NewSpace companies popping up everywhere are crazy and can’t possibly survive.”... [Read More]