iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 25/09/2026

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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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 22/09/2026

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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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

Just about the only thing I disagree with: I don't think it will. But we agree that there's a lot of uncertainty! And he's not being intellectual dishonest about this. If you want to try to jump start a new market / industry / economy, this is not insanity.

further industry investment. The same uncertainty exists on the Moon. I cannot promise today that the economic value extracted from the lunar surface will exceed all of the input costs. What we can do is create a demand signal for landers, rovers, power, communications and other infrastructure, do so in a logical way that affords iterative design, and give a lunar economy every opportunity to emerge. I believe it will, but there are no guarantees. The mission is to return to the Moon and build the base for scientific, technological, national security and even inspirational reasons, and along the way, we hope enormous economic potential is unleashed.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

This is pretty much exactly the opposite prediction that just about every industry-watcher is making, and has been making. And I think it's the correct prediction! And I am so surprised to see any NASA Administrator say it aloud.

[7] I have been very open that, in the near term, I do not know whether there is a sufficiently large LEO market where NASA can truly be one customer of many, but we will do everything within reason and within our budget to set industry up for success and ensure there is a home beyond the International Space Station. I do know demand for commercial LEO destinations will be heavily influenced by transportation cost, and those costs are likely to go up in the near term rather than down. Now, you can argue

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

"It does not." This level of clarity and bluntness is really great to see.

6] People often point to commercial crew and cargo as proof that this model works everywhere. It does not. Those programs benefited from NASA providing substantial early demand across dozens of missions, creating an opportunity for private capital to generate a return, even though I believe most did not, while also allowing an iterative

data has demonstrated that. Even then, the development record across all of the crew and cargo providers was far from perfect. And today, the category leader is increasingly focused on opportunities with much larger potential markets, which should tell us something about the near-term economics of the market NASA helped create.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

Basically the things we can commercialize in space are those that require: (1) extreme altitude (e.g. in order to see or send signals long distances, and this market is oversaturated) (2) microgravity (and this market is both oversaturated and, in fact, micro) And that's the end of the list!

[5] There are absolutely areas where the commercial model works extraordinarily well. Launch, Earth observation and communications are real services supported by real markets, and have been for decades, where NASA truly can be one customer of many. There will be more examples in the years ahead. In those cases, NASA can execute

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

It's refreshing to hear this. Industry insiders keep asserting that everything is moving to firm-fixed. That would be (and has been!) a terrible mistake. Different contracting approaches have different tradeoffs, and make sense in different circumstances. Pick what makes sense for the job!

speculative. NASA, the taxpayers and the interested public should care about whatever achieves the intended mission outcome as quickly, affordably and safely as possible, and the contracting method is secondary. We can screw up cost-plus, fixed-price and as-a-service contracts just as easily. The outcomes are what matter. If, along the way,

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

Correct! For most of the coolest things that NASA does, what Jared calls "the near impossible," NASA is asking for something that has never been done and is the only current or foreseeable customer. That is going to be expensive for two separate reasons, always.

thriving market. When people talk about relying on private capital and commercial services, someone still has to pay, a service provider has to execute really well, and if NASA is the customer, it is likely a service that has rarely been done before. If it turns out NASA is ultimately the only meaningful customer, that has the potential to become a very expensive proposition, if it works at all.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

1000xYes. There has been a meme in and around NASA for >10 years that "commercial" is a magic word that solves every problem. I've heard it described as "commercial fairy dust." There is a further meme that "requirements" are what make space hard and expensive. (We can call that "magical thinking.")

3] I am about as pro-commercial space as it gets, for what I hope are obvious reasons. But to be clear, you cannot simply slap the word “commercial” on every problem or opportunity, pound the table about “deleting NASA’s burdensome requirements,” and assume it automatically produces a more affordable, better solution supported by a thriving market. When people talk about relying on private capital and commercial

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

This use of "if" is a MAJOR shift from the policy discussions and approaches discussed in Project Athena and pushed early in Jared's tenure. As I've said, NASA already has a robust and highly productive "science-as-a-service" ecosystem, but we call it "research and analysis grants."

[2] America and NASA are not giving up our astronauts, and as a commercial astronaut, I state that as emphatically and patriotically as possible. Of course, if useful research and affordable data become available as a commercial service, similarly to how we purchase and make available Earth observation data, we would have to look at it.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

This is absolutely correct and important. Most of the "new space" industry has been passing around the same $10B that originated from NASA. The ones that are now doing ok pivoted into defense. There are a lot of companies providing services and technology for which no non-government market exists.

we also need to fund several new crewed vehicles too? To the author’s point, nothing stopped one company from building a suborbital vehicle and operating it dozens of times without NASA as an anchor tenant, but I think market realities have spoken and the service appears to have been paused.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 04/09/2026

I agree with just about everything Administrator Isaacman says here. And I appreciate and applaud him for having the courage to state some of it so directly.

https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2095345993738850760

Text also at: https://nasawatch.com/2026/09/03/is-commerce-the-solution-to-all-space-things/

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 02/09/2026

Trained largely at USGS Flagstaff! And only after advocacy by Gene Shoemaker to include dedicated science investigation. I visited the USGS archives a few years ago and held Shoemaker's personal copy of the proposal in my hands. Here's a mock stereo camera that they used. (It's made of wood!)

A large oblong shaped object with three lenses and a handle. A tag on it says "stereo camera prototype *per Brent". It's sitting on a black and white map (of the Moon) on a desk.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 02/09/2026

If it's a good idea, "the community" will get quickly behind it. I am confident of that. We are capable of reaching consensus quickly, in fact. But we want to know that we're not wasting years of our lives --- and this will take years! --- for something pointless and stupid, that is doomed to fail.

A half circle reddish blob in a black box.

The only image acquired by Mars Climate Orbiter.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 02/09/2026

Somehow I only just learned that Juan Tamariz died a few weeks ago. He was absolutely fucking brilliant. If there's ever a pantheon of magicians, he's in it. Do yourself a favor and go watch clips of his work. Delight in knowing that magicians are no less baffled than you by what he accomplishes. 🔮

Juan Tamariz sits at a velvet lined table holding a deck of cards with the Jack of Hearts showing, wearing a bright top hat. There's a little car on the table. He sports a loving but devilish grin. Juan Tamariz is a legend.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 01/09/2026

"On budget," that means there is a budget. We still does not know what it is, nor what funding it is coming out of. Nobody asked for this mission. It does not achieve any strategic objectives. It will not do meaningful science. It is likely to do substantial harm to the Mars exploration program.

Quote:

“We have been hard at work now for a couple of months,” Pomerantz said. “We are once again on time and on budget, those magical words that I have not gotten to say that many times previously in my aerospace career, but I’ve gotten to say about every single Mars helicopter project that we’ve done here at AV.”

Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG)
Risk to MEP Current and Future Missions from SkyFall
• Since the MEPAG meeting, NASA has announced that the SkyFall payload on the SR-1 mission will be
managed and funded out of the MEP, under the MEP future missions budget line.
• SkyFall is an uncompeted payload that is not identified as a priority in the Decadal Survey or Mars
Future Plan. No community input has been solicited on SkyFall science objectives.
• Due to assignment of SkyFall to the MEP budget, plans for instrument maturation programs (e.g.,
PRIMER) to benefit future low-cost and commercial missions have been indefinitely delayed.
• Extreme schedule and budget pressure to launch SkyFall in 2028 puts NASA at risk of developing no
other new Mars missions in coming years, and also puts other MEP activities at risk, including active
missions like Mars 2020, MSL, MRO, and Mars Odyssey.
• Finding: In the strongest possible terms, MEPAG encourages NASA to continue supporting the MEP
program of record and the Mars Future Plan in parallel with SkyFall to ensure progress on Decadal
Survey science, preserve science and engineering workforce capabilities, and build on the past
success of the MEP. This includes the continuation of functioning extended missions, which provide
substantial return (see slide 8), and soliciting community input on SkyFall science objectives.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 28/08/2026

This is not exactly the same thing as the "Starfleet Academy" idea described in Isaacman's Project Athena plan. But it smells the same, and Jared is in charge of it.

Trump said the academy would help train the service members, engineers and civilian operators needed as the U.S. Space Force and commercial space industry grow and Washington expands its ambitions on the moon and ‌beyond. [From: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/trump-will-sign-order-create-us-space-academy-2026-08-28/]

Sec. 3. Duties. (a) The Commission shall advise and assist the President regarding proposals to establish the United States Space Academy (Space Academy), a proposed NASA-led Federal academy dedicated to combining rigorous technical education with leadership development, discipline, and a durable commitment to public service. The Space Academy will develop a professional corps of civically grounded leaders prepared to advance American interests within the space domain. [From: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/establishing-the-united-states-space-academy/]

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/08/2026

The pushback against data centers is authentic. There are many reasons to oppose them, and the people building them. However, if I were betting big on a company trying to float a >$2T valuation on "orbital AI compute," I would do everything I could to encourage opposition to building them on Earth.

Page 11 of the SpaceX S-1 filing with the SEC available at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 21/08/2026

"Venture Predation" (2023) is one of the most important documents for understanding the "new space" and "AI" industries. "Critically, for VCs and founders, a predator does not need to recoup its losses [to] sell their shares [...] to later investors." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Abstract

Predatory pricing is a strategy firms use to suppress competition. The predator prices below its own costs to force its rivals out of the market. After they exit, the predator raises its prices to supracompetitive levels and recoups the cost of predation. The Supreme Court has described predatory pricing as “rarely tried” and “rarely successful” and has established a liability standard that is nearly impossible for plaintiffs to satisfy. We argue that one kind of company thinks predatory pricing is worth trying and at least potentially successful—venture-backed startups.

A venture predator is a startup that uses venture finance to price below its costs, chase its rivals out of the market, and grab market share. Venture capitalists (VCs) are motivated to fund predation—and startup founders are motivated to execute it—because it can fuel rapid, exponential growth. Critically, for VCs and founders, a predator does not need to recoup its losses for the strategy to succeed. The VCs and founders just need to create the impression that recoupment is possible, so they can sell their shares at an attractive price to later investors who anticipate years of monopoly pricing. In this Article, we argue that venture predation can harm consumers, distort market incentives, and misallocate capital away from genuine innovations. We consider reforms to antitrust law and securities regulation to deter it.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 21/08/2026

There is definitely good work being done. That experiment flew on a Space Tango bus, which is a great company that I personally know well. But these experiments are a long way from consumer-facing commercial viability. E.g. that article contains the important hedge words "one day."

LambdaVision’s goal is to one day provide a solution for patients with these devastating disorders that currently have no cure. The company’s artificial retina, composed of multiple layers of bacteriorhodopsin, can be put in the eye in place of lost photoreceptor cells, Greco explained.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 21/08/2026

And separate, but these passages from Wikipedia illustrate some of the sloppy thinking around launch costs: 1. World's richest liar said a thing, so we'll run with that. 2. Ignore capital expenditures when determining "profitability." ($500M revenue only covers $500M R&D if rockets cost nothing.)

Musk first mentioned Falcon Heavy in a September 2005 news update, referring to a customer request from 18 months prior.[19] Various solutions using the planned Falcon 5 (which was never flown) had been explored, but the only cost-effective, reliable iteration was one that used a 9-engine first stage—the Falcon 9. The Falcon Heavy was developed using private capital with Musk stating that the cost was more than US$500 million. No government financing was provided for its development.

A year after the successful demo flight, SpaceX had signed five commercial contracts worth US$500–750 million, meaning that it had managed to cover the development cost of the rocket.[51] The second flight, and first commercial one, occurred on April 11, 2019,[52] launching Arabsat-6A, with all three boosters landing successfully for the first time.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 19/08/2026

When a bottled water company is releasing ads in opposition to data centers, the opposition has clearly gone mainstream. This will make orbital data centers seem more attractive, because the strongest argument for them is to avoid zoning laws. But they will still never make sense. Still bullshit.

Jason Kelce with a Garage Beer t-shirt and a person made of muscle cushions with a can of Liquid Death for a head and eyes for nipples, wearing spiked bracelets. Both hold jars of yellow liquid under the words "WE WANT YOUR PEE!" A timestamp of 1:30 in the corner indicates that this is a screenshot from a video.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 19/08/2026

Jared's hobby rocket does not have much support among planetary scientists. Nobody asked for it. NEP was barely more than a footnote in the Decadal. Also, nobody asked for Skyfall. It appears to exist only to give the NEP demo something charismatic to carry. It won't do meaningful science.

“What keeps me awake at night is, in three years’ time, will we have a space nuclear program?” asked Bhavya Lal, former NASA associate administrator for technology, policy and strategy and the co-author of a 2025 study that looked at the long, troubled history of space nuclear programs.

Space nuclear programs enjoy strong support today, she said, “but this support is positional, not structural. It is attached to people and not to paper. So, what happens in January 2029?”

That is an issue for SR-1, which she said is a program without a clear customer. It is carrying a technology demonstration payload, a set of Mars helicopters called SkyFall, but she noted those could fly on a different mission. The LR-1 lunar reactor program is also not directly dependent on SR-1. “The only thing that truly needs SR-1 is SR-2, SR-3 and SR-4, and those don’t exist.”

Members of the MEPAG community,
There have been deeply concerning developments in the NASA MEP budget and proposed federal R&A
funding policy in the last several weeks that many of you may not be aware of and have arguably worse
consequences than last year’s budget threat. If there was ever a time to take action in support of the Mars
Exploration Program and federally-funded scientific research, now is that time.
MEP status: The Mars Exploration Program has been directed to absorb and manage the Skyfall payload
on the Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) demonstration mission within its budget. This will largely be under the
Mars Future Missions line, effectively eliminating any new developments/missions until after SR-1/Sky-
fall launches. It is also anticipated that the costs for Skyfall will exceed the available funding in that line
($110M), which means that without a budget augmentation in FY27, the chances are quite high that more
than one currently operating mission at Mars will be terminated and their funds redirected to supporting
Skyfall.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 17/08/2026

I have the "top men" conversation a few times times a month. Who?!

Indiana Jones questions a bureaucrat who has assured him that "top men" are working on it.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 12/08/2026

Recall that CBO estimated that Golden Dome would cost ~$1.2T and will be easily overwhelmed by an attack. I would bet that estimate is probably 4-10x low. The largest and most complicated megaproject ever. Golden Dome is bullshit. It is SDI but 100x stupider. www.cbo.gov/system/files...

Congression Budget Office (screenshot)

Potential Costs of a National Missile Defense System
May 12, 2026 | Report
CBO estimates that a national missile defense system possessing capabilities broadly consistent with those in the "The Iron Dome for America" executive order would cost about $1.2 trillion to develop, deploy, and operate for 20 years.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 10/08/2026

MSR is nearly impossible. Any version is complicated, difficult, and expensive. The community agreed on the costs we were willing to bear for MSR and, when expected to exceed that, the project was cancelled. The funds spent were _invested_ in learning how to do MSR and other hard things.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 10/08/2026

If NASA is going to attempt to "do the nearly impossible" (which is Jared's own framing), then a lot of projects will not ultimately work out. If the people who supported those projects are retroactively punished for "wasting" money, then people will no longer attempt to do difficult things.

$Space Flight (1974) by Robert McCall. An astronaut floats in free space in front of the Earth, heart shaped lines of diffraction surrounding them. Along the limb of the Earth are a space station, with another astronaut, several space planes, and the limb of the Moon.$

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 10/08/2026

Jared Isaacman recently posted a video on Twitter that included these slides. He continues to describe money invested in MSR as "lost" or "wasted." If investments in MSR are "wasted," then he must prepare to personally own the "waste" of every project that doesn't pan out on his watch, too.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 01/08/2026

Omfg it's literally a Burning Man fever dream.

“Maybe there’s some, you know, grand party in the desert. It could be anything. Somebody throws an event and they want their event lit from space. Reflect is not just a power company.”

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 29/07/2026

There is little publicly available evidence that F9 dramatically cut the cost of launch. There is some evidence that launch costs have continued to increase, at least for NASA. See e.g. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Counting stars and costs: An empirical examination of space launch cost trend at NASA
Author links open overlay panelMoon J. Kim
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Highlights

•
NASA's launch cost increased by an average of 2.8 % annually from 1996 to 2024.
•
No evidence of a shift in cost trend even after the introduction of a new provider.
•
Results show limited effects of the competitive market.
•
Policies assuming a competitive market should be re-assessed to foster competition.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 28/07/2026

I just recently submitted this related abstract to NASA's Mission Software for the Science Mission Directorate Workshop 2026. (science.data.nasa.gov/features-eve...)

Development and support of core software libraries and tools is more critical in an era of LLM- and "AI"-assisted coding, and will yield a better return on investment to NASA. Large language models are an undeniably useful tool for software development and aid to scientific data exploration. In constrained budget environments, there may therefore be a temptation to pull back on direct support for development and maintenance of core software libraries due to a mistaken belief that "AI" can seamlessly cover for any gaps or lost capability. However, LLMs perform far more effectively on software development tasks when they have robust, well-documented, and interoperable software components to build upon. They are also definitionally less effective in niche or emerging domains, where there is less training data. "Niche" and "emerging" are precisely where NASA operates, and incurs the most risk, when working to "achieve the near impossible." As an LLM extrapolates farther afield from trusted, reliable, core tools, it becomes both more costly and more prone to errors. There is further risk of proliferation of parallel solutions to the same problem. Aside from representing unnecessarily duplication of effort, the cost of validation and verification will grow.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 25/07/2026

One of the biggest and most disruptive innovations of "new space" is that they no longer meticulously define mission success criteria well in advance, with all stakeholders involved, in unambiguous language and verifiable, quantified benchmarks. Now it's vibes. Was that a success? 🤷 Who's asking?

Starship #40, flight 13. Bobs in the ocean on fire.

Screenshot from IM-1 landing press conference, showing a small model of IM-1 laying on its side, perched atop an even smaller 3D printed model of IM-1. In what was retroactively described as the "partial success" orientation.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/07/2026

Looks like a lot of relights didn't happen.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/07/2026

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... See the use of all visible wavelength filters to determine chromaticity. Image products were often composited from the narrow band filters, but not the "true color" image products.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 24/07/2026

I am confused about why you are not referencing the calibration papers... e.g. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... See designations for "red" and "blue" but none for "green." Also see relatively narrow band passes on all filters.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 23/07/2026

I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that this also puts the launch attempt after the market closes for the weekend.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 22/07/2026

planetarynews.org/editorials/M...

$MEP status: The Mars Exploration Program has been directed to absorb and manage the Skyfall payload on the Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) demonstration mission within its budget. This will largely be under the Mars Future Missions line, effectively eliminating any new developments/missions until after SR-1/Sky- fall launches. It is also anticipated that the costs for Skyfall will exceed the available funding in that line ($110M), which means that without a budget augmentation in FY27, the chances are quite high that more than one currently operating mission at Mars will be terminated and their funds redirected to supporting Skyfall. FY27 budget status: The President’s budget request for NASA Science looked very much like last year’s, and although members of Congress quickly indicated that request was “DOA”, the House markup is flat (at the FY26 level), with the entire MEP at $300M. This means that a substantial fraction of the MEP’s budget will go to Skyfall. Although launch is slated for late 2028, there are legitimate questions as to whether that is feasible. f that slips to the 2031 opportunity, and the MEP budget is not augmented to cover the added costs of Skyfall over the next several years, the planned program (based on the Mars Fu- ture Plan) is unlikely to make substantial progress. The Senate markup has been delayed, so we have a short window of time to show our support for a budget that enables the MEP program of record to contin- ue alongside Skyfall. That would include a new payload pipeline, the previously-planned activities for the Mars Future Missions line, and support for ongoing extended missions that are still returning excellent science data and helping to ensure we maintain a highly skilled scientific and engineering workforce.$

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 17/07/2026

During the press conference, Isaacman specifically and repeatedly referred to a single rover called "Promise" that was already built and essentially ready to fly. Did he not understand the proposal from JPL? I won't ever bet against JPL engineers making something work, but this is a terrible idea.

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 02/07/2026

Thanks. He appears to assume (his word) the launch costs by backing out from the claim that Starlink was "breakeven cash flow," and assuming that launch costs were included in the "cash flow" claim. To his later point, we also now know that SpaceX is drowning in debt. Is this the best evidence?

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Chase Million @millionconcepts.com · 19/06/2026

I appreciate this honest take. I've spent 25 years looking at pictures of Mars. While they are beautiful and awe-inspiring, part of the takeaway should be that Mars is lifeless and monochrome. You might die of boredom first. There is no planet more beautiful (and alive) than Earth, not even close.

At the time of writing, the total number of Perseverance photos uploaded onto NASA’s website stands at almost one million. I spent a couple of hours going through the gallery, and I hesitate to report that it was hard to feel inspired. Most of the images show empty tracts of sand and rubble beneath a brownish, miasmic sky. Even the Mastcam-Z photos seemed hazy and monochromatic, as if taken through a sepia filter.

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