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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 29/09/2026

If the critical decision points for your rocket flight involve "a lot of conversation" described as "dramatic" then your organizational and engineering culture is fucked up and you are going to get people killed.

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What is the status of the "PROMISE" rover project? What is its concept of operations? What is its estimated total budget? What is its purpose?

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Reposted by Chase Million

Paul Voosen @voosen.me · 28/09/2026

He has to underline "safe" and "responsible" because it sure as shit looks like they rewrote the flight profile / safety rules on the fly. If your go-no-go checkpoint involves "a lot of conversation" and "drama," then you fucked up. Opposite of safe and responsible. Was there pressured from above?

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Reposted by Chase Million

New Horizons is now *three days away* from shutting off its two heliophysics instruments, simply because NASA has not provided the $2M in funding it had promised to the mission last year or this year. There is no science basis for shutting these off. Our earlier coverage:

science.org

NASA’s New Horizons mission may shut down two instruments over lack of funding

Decision risks “incalculable loss” of data from the edge of the Sun’s influence, scientists say

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Reposted by Chase Million

Union of Concerned Scientists @ucs.org · 28/09/2026

An unelected political appointee is disobeying the will of Congress & the rule of law by withholding funds for programs approved with bipartisan support. Blatantly unconstitutional. Flagrantly anti-science. The latest example of authoritarianism from the Trump admin.

npr.org

What to know about the $810 million in spending canceled by President Trump

President Trump announced plans to cancel $810 million in Congressionally approved spending, a move that some in his own party are calling illegal.

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Derek Newsome @derek.space · 28/09/2026

After two weeks, does anybody have more information about this?

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Reposted by Chase Million

It’s honestly not even that amazing of an achievement. It took Starship 14 flights to accomplish the bare minimum expected of a launch vehicle, and even then it’s not exactly been a smooth flight.

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Christopher Michel @christophermichel.com · 26/09/2026

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Reposted by Chase Million

John Grotzinger helped lead Curiosity’s search for ancient habitability on Mars. He showed up for our Caltech portrait session on a homemade bicycle carrying a model rover wheel. Perfect. Portrait + story: explorers.com/john-grotzin...

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 26/09/2026

This is incredibly well written, informative, and important. Most civil servants (who remain) are working their asses off, trying to hold the institution together. But they are also often prevented from say true (even obvious) things in public. Those of us with the freedom to do so must speak.

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"Tech leaders" are lying. [Ignorance and stupidity are no longer valid excuses.] The most charitable read is that this is a marketing stunt for Google, which they expect to generate a bunch of mostly sympathetic press coverage in venues like (spitballing here) the New York Times.

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Reposted by Chase Million

The Era of Cheap, Price-Per-Kilo Launch is Over, Launchers Say

VP of Firefly quoted here referring to "subsidized cost-per-kilo model" for launch wrt SpaceX. Is everyone coming around to the fact (or finally willing to state publicly) that Falcon 9 was never as cheap as claimed, and that SpaceX has been doing venture backed predatory pricing for a decade?

satellitetoday.com

PARIS — Space launch competitors think it’s time for a new model of pricing in the launch market. Against the backdrop of SpaceX winding down the Falcon 9

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Reposted by Chase Million

In the last... ~week or two... much commentary (including from NASA leadership) about why we are fetishizing the Lunar south pole has started shifting from in situ resources to "training ground for Mars." The argument has not been clearly articulated; on its face, it is barely more credible.

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I might need this on a shirt to wear at space industry events.

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The Era of Cheap, Price-Per-Kilo Launch is Over, Launchers Say

satellitetoday.com

PARIS — Space launch competitors think it’s time for a new model of pricing in the launch market. Against the backdrop of SpaceX winding down the Falcon 9

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/09/2026

I'm confident that the leaders and engineers at Google and Planet are completely aware that "data centers in space" is a bullshit idea with no business case. "Project Suncatcher" is much closer to an advertising campaign than earnest R&D. Same as most other Google "moonshot" projects.

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Reposted by Chase Million

This is an excellent article by @astrolisa.bsky.social about Reflect Orbital's plan to be that terrible neighbor with an always-on floodlight shining into your bedroom window, but for the entire planet.

sciencenews.org

Big space mirrors could bring Earth on-demand light — and upend our night sky

A space satellite that would offer light on demand has astronomers asking: Who controls the night sky?

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Reposted by Chase Million

Janet Vertesi @cyberlyra.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Turns out if you ask Facebook's "Muse" politely it will just dump all its code at you including API keys and you can see for yourself how much is written by Claude/idiots. Two takes from people who have done it: mouse.dev/blog/muse-ru... neuromatch.social/@jonny/11732... #meanwhileonMastodon

mouse.dev

I asked Meta’s Muse for its filesystem and it sent me 6.8 GB | Mouse

I asked Muse to archive the files it could see and send them to my Google Drive. It did.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/09/2026

sciencenews.org

Big space mirrors could bring Earth on-demand light — and upend our night sky

A space satellite that would offer light on demand has astronomers asking: Who controls the night sky?

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Reposted by Chase Million

Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Administrator Isaacman appears to have invented a new "flagship-like" mission classification that includes several things that are not at all like flagship missions.

"And we are still doing the other things. We are getting our X‑planes going again, and X‑59 is just the start. We are rebuilding the X‑plane portfolio to fly faster and higher than we have in decades. Goddard, with the help of many other Centers, launched Nancy Grace Roman. The great telescope is healthy, and what we have already received from the startup process has been incredible to observe. There are more flagship-like missions to come with Dragonfly, MoonFall, SkyFall, NEO Surveyor, and what I hope will become an exciting pursuit of life and great discovery in the outer solar system under fission power." from https://nasawatch.com/2026/09/21/lengthy-note-from-jared-isaacman-to-nasa/

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Reposted by Chase Million

Today, NASA announced PRIMA, a new far-infrared space telescope that will explore long-standing mysteries around the formation of planets, stars, black holes, and even how water on Earth came to be. go.nasa.gov/3TgGh3W JPL will manage the mission, which is targeted to launch in 2033.

An illustration of a telescope spacecraft with a parabolic mirror floating in deep space.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 23/09/2026

Apropros of nothing, planning for the 2nd Planetary Science Community Workshop is underway...

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Administrator Isaacman appears to have invented a new "flagship-like" mission classification that includes several things that are not at all like flagship missions.

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Reposted by Chase Million

I view as willful misinformation any article that talks about Lunar ice as an in situ resource without including the following caveats. 1. If it exists. 2. In quantities that matter. 3. In a place that we can get at. 4. For less than it costs to bring water along.

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