Elon Musk seems to be planning an EELV killer. And I've added Jon Goff's Selenian Boondocks to the blogroll, as well as an Air Force procurement officer's blog (he's stationed at Kirtland, but reports on Musk's visit to Wright-Patt recently, where he seems to have been training) from which Jon got the story, and he seems at first glance to be interested in space procurement. In addition to the SpaceX story, Jon has a lot of good reportage of the recent Return to the Moon conference, and some appropriate criticism of NASA's new lunar return architecture.

A few weeks ago, I solicited suggestions for additions to the space blogroll, and am embarrassed to admit that I never got around to doing the update, so here's a second call. If you have a partial or fully space blog that you think that Transterrestrial readers will find interesting, point it out in comments (in other words, I'm actually inviting comment spammers to post here, as long as it's the right flavor), and I'll try to actually do an update this time, but if nothing else, you'll get a little PR from the comments section.

I do about a third of my blog posts on space topics.

http://robot_guy.blogspot.com

My blog is space-themed but tends to accumulate posts that should not go into my work blog.

Space4Commerce
http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/

Call it the blog of a guy who is on the periphery of the space access business.

Rand, thanks for the links. BTW, I just installed trackbacks, to make everyone's lives a little bit easier.

http://monolith.caltech.edu/blog/

Sorry about the confusion about where the meeting with Elon took place--it was Kirtland, not Wright-Patt.

4 more engines? Sounds like a larger diamter core.

Actually I'd like to recomend Dave Dietzlers MSN site.

http://groups.msn.com/DaveDietzler

Additionally, on my intermittantly updated blog, I posted a defence of the expendable launch model for short term exploration.

http://brickmuppet.blogspot.com/2005/08/in-defence-of-presidents-space-plan.html

I'd appreciate any feedback.

http://spacebombardment.blogspot.com/

All space, All American, All for American Organic Law in space.

Mike,
4 more engines? Sounds like a larger diamter core.

Yeah, I'm assuming that's the route they intend to take. After all, the upper stage will have a 5m fairing, so there's a good chance that they'll have a much wider first and second stage than the Falcon V. Adding 4 engines without more tank to go with them doesn't really help payload all that much.

~Jon

You realize if they go three cores ala EELV Heavy, they will have 27 engines lit at once. Shades of the USSR!

Question:

What happens if you loose one on one of the outboard cores?

I would assume he would have enough reserve to run the other eight hotter to fully compensate for the lost in thrust from the shut down engine.

I think I am starting to see a pattern develop here....I'll bet that he develops the Falcon IX with its large core and then develops a larger engine to replace several smaller ones...then as he scales up in core size again, he clusters engines and then bootstraps his way up to even larger ones......that way he does not have to invest in a larger core and larger engines all at once.

"Intermittent postings from Canberra, Australia on Software Development, Space, Politics, and Interesting URLs.
And of course, Brains..."

http://aebrain.blogspot.com

BTW finally gave in and bought "Children of Apollo". Glad I did. Just wish all our hardware was as reliable as in the book :-) but your poetic license hasn't been revoked for that.

Entrepreneurial space, R&D, macroeconomics, local DC issues. Occassional posting.

http://carriedaway.blogs.com/

http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/ is 404 - is the URL correct?

Not only has chairforceengineer been 404 at least 12 hours as of this writing, but the Jon Goff link no longer mentions Falcon IX. WTF?

Oops,

Jon's Falcon IX post is still there. I just didn't scroll down far enough. My bad.

But chairforceengineer has been 404 for quite a while. My guess is that Musk's lecture at Kirtland (AFRL's Space Vehicle Directorate?) was not meant for public release.

At this point in time, the Falcon I is wildly
behind schedule and over cost. To be planning
on a saturn I class vehicle when the team involved
has not had one second of flight time seems
optimistic beyond words or caution.

For the last 18 months the Falcon 1 has been
3-6 months away from launching a trend that speaks
to a massive misunderstanding of the programattics,
scope, complexity and presentation.

To see this team now promising an even larger
feat when they haven't flown bodes poorly. I would
be more impressed if the SpaceX team had merely
said "We have the Falcon 1, we want to get it flying, learn lessons and then see where the
market takes us".

Sorry to be so late to this party, but Rand, have you seen Jerry Pournelle's space blog, Chaos Manor Musings?

my blog isn't space "themed" but I write regularly about current missions with a focus on asteroid exploration.