I've come to realize today, on the dawn of our first return to the Moon in over half a century, how wrong I've been about space policy for the past decades. Seeing the majestic Space Launch System with its mighty SRBs sitting on the pad now, poised to once again take men to the…
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) April 1, 2026
Happy April Fools Day to you too.
It’s a monument alright, and all of it will be tossed into the sea never to be used again. But you may say “the capsule will comeback!” Yes, and land in the sea. It will then be studied for all the defects then put into a museum, never to be used again. It will be all that remains of this monument.
The Least likely outcome: Challenger
The most likely outcome: Apollo 13
The fantasy outcome: Apollo-8 light
My prediction is the crew will come back just fine. However, Orion will use up more margin than anticipated.
Binary predictions are right 50% of the time, which are better odds than a broken clock.
There is still the option of an abort prior to Day 2’s TLI burn. Which would keep reliance on the untested and/or possibly poorly modeled to a minimum.
They are deliberately going to follow the flight path taken by Apollo 13, which only followed it because it was the one flight that failed.
But I do wish them success, so we can put this dead-end behind us and get on with a real programs with real landings.
The NASA worm on the SRBs is interesting to me. I know a lot of grey beards at NASA hated when Bolden got rid of it. I see it as a sign of their stubbornness and perseverance at NASA that it is back. I mean that as both a positive and negative. It also reminds me when the meme going around NASA back in the day was that commercial space meant corporate logo advertising all over the vehicle.