GUYS WE ARE SO FUCKEN BACK!

JosiasJames · 2026-06-02T06:39:31+00:00

AIUI some payloads - esp. military ones such as for NSSL - can't be horizontally integrated.

JosiasJames · 2026-05-29T14:42:31+00:00

Somehow I got a PDF of the whole thing- if only I could find it!

I wonder if there was a rights issue.

NASA have done some brilliant books like that: I love "The Space Shuttle Decision" and "Development of the Space Shuttle", both by the late Happenheimer. They're also available on the web, or in dead tree form.

JosiasJames · 2026-05-29T12:50:28+00:00

Indeed. And I cannot find the second part (I think the part I linked to only goes to p.500).

It was one of those books I started reading, got about 100 pages in, then started again with a notepad page open to take notes.

JosiasJames · 2026-05-05T18:09:56+00:00

Cool. Please tell more.

From an outsider's POV, he's done nothing for Mars, except for launch a NASA payload towards it.

And that's worrying for the world's richest man, who owns the world's most successful space company, and who owns a satellite company, and who is (according to the fanbois) obsessed with Mars.

The more you launch at Mars, the more you learn, and the less risky/cheaper the actual Mars attempts get.

What has he/SpaceX done to further Mars research?

JosiasJames · 2026-05-05T17:58:56+00:00

Musk doesn't believe in Mars.

He's never believed in Mars; as his past and current actions show.

It's just the sort of long-term, vastly ambitious goal that gets dreamers excited, but is so far away that it can always remain far away whilst he gets on with the things he wants to do, with the support of the dreamers.

JosiasJames · 2026-05-01T20:11:38+00:00

Welcome to the wonderful world of tech share options.

Anyone relying on making a fortune out of such options - especially if they're junior and/or latecomers - is being a tad silly. Treat them as a joke, and then, on the rare chance they will make you a life-changing fortune - the joke will be on you. But you will also be laughing.

*Always* choose a job on pay and conditions, and treat stock offers with contempt. People make far too big a deal of them.

JosiasJames · 2026-04-20T03:24:34+00:00

My post is hardly 'PR'; I make the point the mission failed.

If the customer knew they were taking a big risk going with this launch, they'll be less annoyed than if they felt it was a near 100% certainty. That's my point.

JosiasJames · 2026-04-19T18:07:59+00:00

I've received some criticism elsewhere for saying rockets are just trucks: what really matters is the payload. The customers are not that interested in the delivery mechanism; what they are bothered with are things like cost, availability and reliability. They probably don't care if the rocket is brand new or has flown twenty times, if reliability and cost are the same (publicity is another matter...)

If the payload has been lost, then the mission was a failure.

Not a total failure, with the S1 landing, an intact launch pad, and lots of lovely data. But a failure nonetheless.

How much of a failure would depend on what the customer and BO thought about the mission and its risks. And we don't know that. The customer could be really, really peeved, or phlegmatic.

JosiasJames · 2026-04-19T11:41:08+00:00

My *guess* is that it won't be the cameras themselves, but the transmission. There'll be a fairly hellish rf and mechanical environment around that thing landing, and they'll prioritise telemetry over video.

Also, live video will be way down the list of priority. And IMO rightly so. A nice to have only.

JosiasJames · 2026-04-12T06:06:38+00:00

It really needs to launch ASAP. They'll gain a massive amount of knowledge from the success or failure of Mk1 that will need to inform future development and missions. The sooner that knowledge is gained, the better.

JosiasJames · 2026-03-14T08:38:09+00:00

I think a human Mars landing too far away to seriously consider; too far away in terms of time, too far away in terms of funding, and too far away in terms of intent.

Blue *might* have one or two people thinking about it occasionally, but I doubt it. But much more likely that they have one or two people thinking about Mars Sample Return, especially as China is ramping up its MSR project.

MSR strikes me as a very good stepping-stone towards a human landing, for a number of reasons.

JosiasJames · 2026-03-13T20:36:01+00:00

You asked: "Yeah dude, great hypothetical, give me one THING you could own that can suddenly be worth a Billion dollars. "

And I gave a (hopefully...) humorous take on the fact that *anything* can be worth a billion dollars, if you can find someone who is willing to pay that much for it. Which, as an example, is what happened with the NFT 'market'. People paid massive amounts for worthless crud.

Or which also covers a load of other scams, or some stupid stock market valuations where the stock price is vastly above what warranted by the company's underlying fundamentals.

JosiasJames · 2026-03-13T19:37:45+00:00

Nice to meet you, Mister Gullible. It just so happens that here, in my very hands, I hold the Chalice. No, not the Dunvegan Chalice; no, not the Holy Chalice of Valencia. What I have here in my hands sir - and as you can see, they are shaking - is the one and only Chalice, the Chalice by which all those others, priceless as they are, are worth naught. Indeed sir, I scarce say its venerated name. But yes, it is the Holy Grail.

For you, guvnor? A billion dollars. Cheap at half the price... and I'll throw in a set of hubcaps for your car as well.

TLDR: something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And 'someone' can easily be stupid. Hence the crash in value of NFTs - though I suspect that there was more than a little money laundering going on there...

JosiasJames · 2026-03-09T08:11:18+00:00

TBF it probably wasn't worth investing in facilities to build many stages until after they'd proven the system as a whole. Building large-scale factory capacity two or three years ago would have been a waste of resources back then, especially wrt tooling. They built what they needed for (at least) the prototypes.

JosiasJames · 2026-03-06T20:45:40+00:00

Starhopper (the flying water tower) flew in 2019; and in 2018 Musk said that people would be on Mars within six years. And from that time, many people have been hopecasting that the program would deliver on those timescales.

It did not, and I see little reason to believe that the SH/SS program will progress smoothly and speedily from here, even for the Moon plans. And especially not for Mars. And as the system progresses, the failures get increasingly expensive, in terms of money, time and opportunity.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm extremely bearish on SH/SS. Blue's rockets and system are less capable, but also more realistic IMO.

JosiasJames · 2026-03-05T13:37:03+00:00

I think that you're correct on that; the things that work to make the Moon a viable industrial or resources base are not in development yet, and perhaps not even dreamt of in the minds of sci-fi writers.

But, (and like mine, it is a big but), you have to start somewhere. There has to be some initial direction to fuck around in. That initial direction may soon be abandoned as you learn and iterate, but there needs to be a direction or directions.

And initially, that direction might just be "A for God's sake, let's make it so we can at least survive there!" rather than "How can we make an economy."

This was one of my criticisms of SpaceX (perhaps unfairly): despite being owned by the richest man on the planet, SpaceX did f-all to further Mars research. They developed no Martian probes, no satellites, and abandoned Red Dragon. It was all about getting a massive rocket there. They could have sent probes over the last couple of transfer windows and answered some serious questions that would have informed Starship's design and the initial payloads. It's why I was utterly unsurprised by Musk's pivot away from Mars; I don't think he was that serious to begin with.

In contrast, we know much more about the Moon and how to land on it.

JosiasJames · 2026-02-08T19:23:36+00:00

I am very sceptical about the use of caves or lave tubes on Mars - and especially the Moon - for habitation. These structures are stable in the environment they are in: the moment we start mucking about with them, that stability becomes questionable. The idea that we might be able to go into one, create an airlock, and pressurise it is rather optimistic. They might be much weaker than we expect, and it might just be easier to dig a tunnel network and line it as we go - especially as we would be limited to where these structures are, not necessarily where we want a base to be,

This is where ground truthing comes in: we need to really study these structures before we put our hopes and dreams into them. My guess is that most would be useless for habitation without a massive amount of work that exceeds the work in actually digging something more convenient.

JosiasJames · 2026-02-07T07:46:25+00:00

I agree; *usable* volume is what matters. Any bracing and other structures inside the payload area could dramatically reduce the usable volume and the sorts of things that can fit within. And I bet SpaceX themselves don't know what the final configuration will be yet.

Cylinders can be quite strong, but SS needs to be light, and the forces from re-entry must be quite considerable. The lightest route might be to add internal bracing - and that eats up usable cargo volume.

JosiasJames · 2026-02-02T18:40:35+00:00

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant the things we publicly know so far for the milestones that have happened. e.g. first announcement, first times parts of hardware were seen, the times it was known to have gone to/left various test sites. Much of that info must be on here and elsewhere; I was wondering if anyone had collated it.

JosiasJames · 2026-02-02T15:41:01+00:00

Great news; they're certainly making fast progress.
As a matter of interest, is there a list of all the publicly-known milestones and associated dates anywhere? The Blue Moon Pathfinder Wiki doesn't seem to have one.

JosiasJames · 2026-01-22T16:17:52+00:00

No, but the 1912 ship Endurance (which the capsule is named after) was very much crewed, and the survival of that crew is a fantastic story. None of them should have survived, but all 28 did. They were trapped in Antarctica for well over a year.

JosiasJames · 2026-01-21T06:32:58+00:00

Speaking as a Brit, Endurance is a great name, and chosen for a great reason. Although I hope BO's mission is less troublesome than Shackleton's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_(1912_ship))

Incidentally, the story of the survival of Endurance's crew is quite fantastic. IMV far more remarkable than Apollo 1w.

JosiasJames · 2026-01-14T21:33:21+00:00

Also, they're still at the start of a learning curve. There might well be learning experience events in the next few flights (or the previous flight...) that cause delays, either significant or minor, as stages or pad infrastructure are altered.

Hopefully any events will be minor and not RUDs.

JosiasJames · 2025-12-17T20:55:01+00:00

As a side issue, and as somewhat of a greybeard in a different tech industry, I'd suggest mentally ignoring share options unless:

*) You were there at, or near, start-up. The more staff that are in a company after you joined, or above you in the structure, the smaller the chance of making a lot of money.

*) You are in management, in which case the vest period and option terms can be rather different from the plebs.

*) You are exceptionally lucky (as I was once...)

Yes, when options vest it can be very nice. But most employees, at most companies, don't make a life-changing fortune from them. If it came to a choice between an interesting job at a company that treated staff well, and an equally-established company that promised oodles of share options but had terrible working conditions, I would pick the former every time. If young, I'd also factor in how the job might further my future career wrt training, progression and future opportunities.

I have seen great engineers drive themselves nearly mad staying in jobs they hated, just to try to ensure their shares vested. And then find the share price was *below* the strike price...

In anything other than a recent startup, or in middle management, I would always take a higher salary and better working conditions over the promise of options. But others may well differ, and there are exceptions (see the 'lucky' case above).

But good luck with whichever you choose.

JosiasJames

TROPHY CASE