Planetocracy

One thing I hear a lot when talking about space, to the point of cliché, is people referring to colonisation as a "fantasy". This is a way to dismiss the idea, and to directly insult the person making it. I believe in almost every case both purposes are d

The second launch of LandSpace's Zhuque-3 rocket has concluded with a successful first stage landing, although there are some reports that a post-landing fire damaged the booster. Regardless, for a second flight and second landing attempt this is impressi

It has been 65 years since the German Democratic Republic erected the Berlin Wall, which became a damning symbol of the amorality of communism that no amount of propaganda could dismiss. You simply do not need armed guards and razor wire to keep people in

Back in 2024, SpaceX suffered some minor anomalies with the second stage of Falcon 9, and I noticed that, after returning to flight, the trajectory of the Falcon program had changed. The prior two years had seen the fastest growth in flight rate ever - al

The thirteenth flight of Starship was, as with previous flights, a partial success that helped SpaceX towards their testing objectives. A previous attempt on the 16th of July was aborted at ignition due to issues with the Raptor engines, but this time the

Today's post is a guest post from Jordan Taylor. He writes at Incautious Optimism on a range of forward thinking technological topics. It feels unlikely, down here in the drizzle & mud, but humanity's destiny is in the stars.By hook or by crook or by twis

Hard tech without the bytes: A technical blog for curious creatures.

Astrophysics PhD and industry analyst. Advocate of human settlement of the solar system

It is a common conceit to believe that this generation lives at a special point in history. It is easy to point at the arrogance and temporal parochialism of the idea - but in a way, its always true. Our world would be very different if previous generatio

The Chinese space agency has just succeeded in recovering their first orbital booster. The Long March 10B carries comparable payload to the Falcon 9, and uses the same propellants in the first stage. It launched yesterday morning from Wenchang spaceport o