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.
Imagine how excited some archaeologist will be in the future to come across that wreckage. I suspect it won’t stand up as well the old wooden ships. I wonder if they’ll classify it as a religious object or a fertility totem.
Analogous to the Ship of Theseus, another launch vehicle will be redesigned, reimagined SLS hardware the way that SLS was a gosh awful redesign of Shuttle, which itself was a Grand Kluge, and so the design will be preserved across generations for the next 1000 years, until all that will be left will be people like us with time on our hands to argue across our neural implant links whether whatever the thing is called is really the Shuttle or not?
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.
The toilet is just an omen.
In micro-gravity, stuff smells even worse than on Earth?
No, it’s the other way around, actually. Fluids collect in the head and clog up sinuses. It’s why the astronauts need things like sriracha to spice up their food.
So if this thing smells, it must really be stinking up the cabin?
The outcome no one anticipated. 10 days with a stinky toilet?
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.
It’s so bad that neither Lockheed nor Grumman nor Boeing wants its logo, or at least not that anyone can see it?
I have such a bad feeling about this. And Feynman must be whirling in his grave.
But at least you got a laugh from Homer Hickam, which is nice.
The launch looked nominal. Godspeed.
NASA-nominal, Ten minutes into the mission and $2-billion in the ocean
How many minutes into the mission and the toilet won’t suction?
A bad look for Boeing, a bad look for NASA, a bad look for America, a bad look for the world.
Not to worry, NASA sent an email to the Artemis crew on how to get the toilet working again…
But did the crew receive that email?
Or did they overlook it in the crush entering their Inbox?
Depends on their Outlook…
I’ll be here all week. Try the rigatoni. And don’t forget to tip your waitress.
I’ve been busy reading Japanese engagement bait.
None of the solid rocket boosters had stuff break off like the ULA launches?