Author Topic: Altius Space Machines Thread  (Read 326119 times)

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #20 on: 10/02/2010 01:09 am »
Small FYI, Altius signed its first contract last night.  I'll need to get clearance from the company we're contracting for before I can share details, but I should hopefully have something to say by early next week.

~Jon

Congratulations, Jon!  Have  you settled into your new diggs yet?

Alas, not yet.  I was just out in the area for about a week, but I just got back to Utah tonight.  This contract helps us pull a key team member on-board full-time, but it doesn't actually get me on the payroll yet.  I have some options in the works for solving that problem, but it's looking more like late October/early November before I can actually get relocated out to Louisville/Lafayette.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #21 on: 10/02/2010 01:10 am »
Good news! Now where is the scoop? :D

Sorry Lars, been travelling the past two days (just got back to Orem, UT for a few days).  I agreed to run whatever I say by the guys paying for the work, and I still haven't written anything to run by them.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #22 on: 10/07/2010 06:21 am »
Ok, sorry this took so long, but I wanted to get a company blog setup first, and I'm not exactly an IT guy.  Here's the link to the post on the new Altius Space Machines Update Blog:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/10/altius-space-machines-lands-first-contract/

Short summary:
1-We're doing an avionics box and some GN&C development for Ventions LLC, as part of a DARPA nanosat launch vehicle technology project.
2-Ian Garcia, the guy who developed the GN&C systems for Masten's lunar lander challenge vehicles Xombie and Xoie, will be joining Altius and heading up this effort.

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #23 on: 10/12/2010 07:01 pm »
Another quick update:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/10/altius-space-machines-on-the-space-show/

We'll be on the The Space Show on December 13th talking about ASM.

Oh, and on a semi-related note, anyone on here in the Denver area have a room that a poor-starving rocket-startup CEO could rent for a month or two?  I'll be coming out by myself to Denver to setup shop in Louisville, and needed a place to crash while getting my shop setup (and while possibly doing a short-fuse contract).

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #24 on: 10/28/2010 05:22 pm »
Another quick update:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/10/additional-speaking-engagements/

Basically, I'll be speaking at the SSI conference this weekend at NASA Ames, and will also be on a space policy panel at CU Boulder next month.

Also in other news, I'm now out in Louisville setting up shop.  We're hoping to be able to announce a second contract sometime soon.  Also, We will soon be posting information on the sorts of people and skill-sets we're looking at bringing-on over the next year.  We're not yet in the hiring mode now, but there's a non-zero chance we'll be ramping things up fairly quickly in the coming months.

Interesting times.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #25 on: 11/03/2010 08:49 pm »
Fairly boring details for the most part (like getting an office in Louisville), but we did sign our second contract yesterday (which means I get paid again--w00t!):

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/11/nov-2nd-update-joining-the-vault/

More details once I've had a chance to figure out what the customer will allow me to say about the project.  :-)

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #26 on: 11/11/2010 11:32 pm »
Fairly boring details for the most part (like getting an office in Louisville), but we did sign our second contract yesterday (which means I get paid again--w00t!):

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/11/nov-2nd-update-joining-the-vault/

More details once I've had a chance to figure out what the customer will allow me to say about the project.  :-)

~Jon

I got permission from our customer (United Launch Alliance, Advanced Programs group) to say a little bit about the IRAD project we're doing for them.  I didn't want to go into specifics about what we're doing for them, but I was able to mention that it is in support of their IVF project.  More details here:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/11/more-about-that-second-contract/

I'll see what more I can say once I have something worth talking about.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #27 on: 11/12/2010 12:07 am »
Also, I should note that while we're not *yet* to the point where we can hire people to join us, we wanted to let people know the various skill-sets we're trying to fill over the coming months and years:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/11/building-the-team/

As I say in there, I'd rather be in a position where I know who I want to hire, and have to find a way to make it happen, than to have a contract in-hand for something and need to go into panic mode trying to find someone good enough to do the job.

~Jon

Offline robertross

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #28 on: 11/12/2010 01:21 am »
Reading through, sounds like things are progressing well!
Thanks for the news, and congrats on the contracts. Hope you found a place to stay in Denver.

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #29 on: 11/12/2010 02:30 am »
Reading through, sounds like things are progressing well!

Yeah.  I'm actually really happy with how things have worked out so far.  I've got a long way to go, but right now, I have no room to complain about how things have gone.

Quote
Thanks for the news, and congrats on the contracts. Hope you found a place to stay in Denver.

Temporarily I've been staying in the recently finished basement of a friend's parents' house.  Once Ian Garcia gets moved in, I'll be crashing in his living room, and then sometime in December I'll have enough saved up to rent a place for my family to move down.  But yeah, things are going pretty well.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #30 on: 12/09/2010 03:41 pm »
Announcing a small contract we recently signed doing a small hydrazine propellant tank for nanosat propulsion:

http://blog.altius-space.com/2010/12/nanosat-propulsion-propellant-tank-contract/

Also, we have another, much bigger, much cooler new contract that we've been selected to negotiate, but it isn't signed yet, so I'll give details in a few days.

~Jon

Offline Malderi

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #31 on: 12/09/2010 04:18 pm »
Jon,

Thanks for all your insights. It's pretty cool to see the process for a new startup from the inside. Best of luck.

Offline simonbp

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #32 on: 12/10/2010 04:27 pm »
Monoprop hydrazine?

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #33 on: 12/10/2010 05:03 pm »
Monoprop hydrazine?

Yeah, monopropellant hydrazine.  I'm not actually going to be involved in any of the fluid handling or propulsion work (other than as an occasional consultant), just the propellant tank design and manufacturing development.

They're working on some tiny catalytic hydrazine monoprop engines for their 1U cube propulsion system, and they're thinking about reusing them with this bigger tank.  The tank I'm doing is for a propulsion system sized to fit within a super-cube (20x20x20cm), for bigger missions.

Depending on the size of payload attached, you could be talking over 700-1200m/s of dV potential.  Not as good as a bipropellant system could be, but a lot simpler.

~Jon

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #34 on: 12/10/2010 05:04 pm »
BTW, we also were selected for negotiations on an SBIR contract.  It's for an extremely exciting idea, but I probably won't get a chance to write it up until after my Space Show appearance on Monday.

~Jon

Offline simonbp

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #35 on: 12/10/2010 07:26 pm »
Depending on the size of payload attached, you could be talking over 700-1200m/s of dV potential. 

Wow, really? Combine that with a Falcon 1e/similar and you're most of the way to GLXP lander...

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #36 on: 12/10/2010 07:42 pm »
Depending on the size of payload attached, you could be talking over 700-1200m/s of dV potential. 

Wow, really? Combine that with a Falcon 1e/similar and you're most of the way to GLXP lander...

Well...1100m/s is quite a bit short of a lunar landing, but the technology might be relevant.  But as it is, we're not going to be going after the GLXP ourselves.  If someone wanted us to subcontract for them though, we'd definitely be interested.

~Jon

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #37 on: 12/11/2010 02:01 am »
No, but it's enough to get from LLO to the surface. If you use a Star 24 (or so) to capture into a dirty orbit, you could then clean it up with the lander before descent.

And given the creativity shown by current micro/nanosats, I'm sure there are lots of other ways to use it. :)

Offline jongoff

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Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #38 on: 12/11/2010 02:31 am »
No, but it's enough to get from LLO to the surface. If you use a Star 24 (or so) to capture into a dirty orbit, you could then clean it up with the lander before descent.

Well, if you had another stage to do part of the deceleration from lunar orbit (about half of it), then yeah this could work as is.  dV from LLO to the lunar surface is on the order of ~1.8-2.0km/s.  It should be pretty readily scalable though, so we could easily do a bigger tank if the situation merited it.  I'm mostly using this to prove out the general manufacturing technique.

But yeah, it could be part of a GLXP solution.

Quote
And given the creativity shown by current micro/nanosats, I'm sure there are lots of other ways to use it. :)

No argument there.

~Jon

Offline MP99

Re: Altius Space Machines Thread
« Reply #39 on: 12/11/2010 11:28 am »
No, but it's enough to get from LLO to the surface. If you use a Star 24 (or so) to capture into a dirty orbit, you could then clean it up with the lander before descent.

Well, if you had another stage to do part of the deceleration from lunar orbit (about half of it), then yeah this could work as is.  dV from LLO to the lunar surface is on the order of ~1.8-2.0km/s.  It should be pretty readily scalable though, so we could easily do a bigger tank if the situation merited it.  I'm mostly using this to prove out the general manufacturing technique.

But yeah, it could be part of a GLXP solution.

Would this have the T/W to land at 1/6th G?

cheers, Martin

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