The Saturday build session was replaced will a full plan review. We spent the day going over the missions and projects covering the next eight years. Sometimes with all the push on missions and with a large array of technology projects it’s hard to see how it all fits together. It’s important to take a hard look at the plan with the entire team every now and then. It helps keep everyone focused and on track. We’ve made a big change to the number of missions. Flights were combined and bigger steps taken. We’re reduced the number of missions left in the development program from just over one hundred to just over sixty. This summer we will be flying our 100th mission. Hey, were over half way there! When did that happen?
People Everywhere
The Sacramento L-5 Society also had their monthly meeting Saturday. They were rolling in right as we were finishing the team meeting. Our own Karl gave a great talk on rotating habitats.
It was great to see L-5 member Allen Goff get coverage for his FLOC concept. The article was very good however, I don’t see the need to refer to new and out of the box ideas as “crazy” and “insane” over and over again. It seemed unnecessarily rude.
I didn’t mean to be rude–most of that was tongue-in-cheek. I’ve just had enough people give me crap for posting anything that’s even slightly unorthodox that I was trying to head off criticism. I wanted it to be clear that while I thought the idea was clever, that I also didn’t think it was the greatest idea since sliced bread, and the one and only True Way (TM) to get to space. But I probably went overboard in those regards, in which case I apologize.
~Jon
I suppose the FLOC concept could benefit from launch from a Dark Sky Station. Starting at 140,000 feet the drag would be only maybe 1% of that at sea level, so a larger number of ships could be coupled together without as much concern for the drag “nightmare.” Fewer total ships and fewer nail biting exoatmospheric rendezvous. Also, the first such exoatmospheric rendezvous would occur at least 140,000 feet higher, and so occur in a lower drag environment. Perhaps more time could be allocated to each exoatmospheric rendezvous also.