I'm Baaaaack

After a hiatus of nearly a year, I've decided to restart this blog. I'm still here in Korea at the same place, pretty much doing the same thing, so what's new, and why did I stop posting for so long and then suddenly start over?



Well, there were a number of reasons I stopped posting. Certainly I was just too busy, what with studying part time and working and trying to have enough time for family. But as well as that, I have to admit I was discouraged after my company's first attempt at firing the new engine. There was too much time pressure and I felt that marketing commitments had taken priority over the actual engineering, which ultimately severely limited our marketing potential since we were unable to collect the data during the test that would have shown conclusively whether the test had been a success. Nevertheless the company was able to attract significant investment, just by being able to produce a good display of smoke and fire on the demonstration day, which just goes to show! (By the way, although we didn't get good data, we recorded the firing on video, and there is evidence to indicate that the firing was successful, but the mixture ratio was out, resulting in an almost clear, invisible flame - at least that is what I have been told)



Another reason was that I was unable to decide what the blog should be about. There are plenty of really good blogs that post regular news stories, or do detailed in depth analysis of space issues. I certainly have a different perspective based on my location and background but that didn't translate to new topics, so I started to feel that either I had to find new topics and a new focus for the blog, or to fully immerse myself in the nitty gritty of ongoing space related news and discussion in order to provide the quality I expected of myself.



Lastly, I found some of my own ideas in flux, and I wanted to be clear about my own opinions before commenting about someone else's.



So why start posting again and what am I going to write about anyway? Blogs such as Hobbyspace and Transterrestrial Musings offer respectively space related comprehensive online news coverage and detailed in depth analysis and opinion, and there is no point replicating that. Instead I will endeavour to offer a variety of items, such as news about my company, ideas and commentary on space related policy, bits of personal news trivia as it comes up, some news and analysis on Korea, my country of residence, some minor technical stuff, and some daft ideas that come to me from time to time. I have thought of having a different topic for each day of the week, but considering I was posting less than once a month before quitting for almost a year, this could be considered a little ambitious, maybe? Generally, I want to post stuff that might matter to someone else, expands the reader's horizons and perhaps makes their day better.



There is one other topic I want to cover, which is a large part of my reason for restarting. Lately there has been some discussion about motivations and reasons for going into space and the role of government and private industry/ventures. I want to weigh in on this discussion with my own perspective and some associated ideas on space policy, which, while being at least partially in sync with the opinions of the better known commentators, have a different focus that might just have an impact with some readers. You will find out what I mean if you keep reading and I keep posting :)



Finally, I want to maintain this blog in the spirit of a (web) log, not an authoritative text. I doubt that I will have time to furnish every claim and argument with references, although ideally I would like to. I'm likely to make mistakes and change my opinions over a period of time, or even stop posting altogether for a while if things gets too busy. That's just the way life is.