Tag: news

• Why the Pentagon Can’t Pass an Audit

  Posted this to X/Twitter, will post the story here too. I’ve talked about this before, but after I got through grad school I PCSed to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque and became the mission manager for the STP-2 launch. That launch was a task order on the OSP-3 contract, which had a few different vendors on…

  Ryan Patrick

  February 23, 2026

  Posts

  nasa, news, space, spacex, technology, writing

• Elon at My Launch

  Posted this on Twitter, may as well share here too. No NDAs will be violated, and of course opinions are my own. I was the government mission manager for the STP-2 (Space Test Program-2) launch – the first DOD Falcon Heavy. I owned the $160M contract, had to make all technical and programmatic decisions, etc.…

  Ryan Patrick

  June 8, 2025

  Posts

  elon musk, falcon heavy, launch, news, rocket, scifi, space, spacex, technology, tesla, writing

• Position, Navigation, and Timing – GPS!

  When I was a kid, if I wanted my parents to drive me to a friend’s house, I had to hope that either they knew where the address was or print out a MapQuest map to guide them. It was a very different time! Now, you just pull up the address in Google or Apple…

  Ryan Patrick

  October 14, 2024

  Posts, Writing Advice

  gnc, gps, indie author, indie books, navigation, news, pnt, satellite, science fiction, scifi, space, technology, writing

• Types of Rockets

  Like my posts in May and June about orbits and remote sensing respectively, this is a 100-level overview on the different kinds of rockets and how they can be used in sci-fi writing. Note that I’m only going to go through the four primary methods for a rocket to get out of a gravity well,…

  Ryan Patrick

  July 24, 2024

  Posts, Writing Advice

  author, books, indie author, indie books, nasa, news, publishing, reading, rockets, science, scifi, self-pub, self-publishing, space, spacex, writing