Month: February 2026

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10FEB2026 – The Lunar Option

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And now he should change his name to D. D. Harriman. I’ve also always felt the Moon was a better choice. Mostly because with basic chemical rockets, it’s 3-5 days away and there are LOTS of windows to reach it. Mars is 140+ days, and that window is only roughly every two years. If you have a small initial Mars colony, no matter how many ships you have and the Stuff hits the fan, you’re on your own for on average 18 months away from outside help. With Luna its 3-5 days depending on lunar phase and you may be able just to lifeboat back to earth orbit.

Looking the 140 day or so timeline is like the early Europe to American colonies distance from Europe and America had air and food and water. And yet we still had Roanoke and lost 1/2 of Plimouth Colony the first year. Luna lets you learn in a slightly harsher environment with at least some safety net. Mars really has to wait until there are constant thrust engines (be they Nuclear Thermal, Fission/fusion pulsed or straight up fusion) so we can have .01 or .1 g constant and not have to use Hohmann (minimal energy) orbits and have 14 or 4 day transits to Mars/ Nearly every thing Elon (pardon me Delos) had planned for Mars is useful on the moon and can be further refined for future Mars work.

Also, if we’re going to do this, it should be done as G*d, Von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke intended with an orbital station to fuel lunar Starship-like beasts and send them on to the moon. We need the infrastructure. Maybe not immediately but once we try to start moving large quantities back and forth. the division of labor would help.

Elon Musk Bows to the Scientific and Economic Wisdom of photog and Pivots to Luna City Goal

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Last June I wrote a post called Moon Mining in which I made a lot of hyperbolic statements about my future as a miner of precious metals on the Moon.  But in a more serious vein (no pun intended?) I said, “But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars.  The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.

The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty-five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today.  Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.”

And then there’s this post from last week, “It’s Shiny and New” where I talk about Luna City.

And here we are a few days later and this headline appears:

“In a reversal, SpaceX prioritizes ‘city’ on the moon over Mars project, Musk says”

In the article it says, “Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self‑growing city” on the moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years.

SpaceX still intends to start on Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”

What else do I need to say.  Elon, there’s no shame in admitting you’re wrong when someone gently reminds you that wisdom is still a higher authority than Midas-like wealth.  Well, he’s still relatively young and there’s time for him to learn what’s really important, namely building Luna City and naming the main street Neil Armstrong Blvd.

Seriously, I was starting to doubt whether he wasn’t just blowing smoke with all the Mars mission talk.  That stuff is a generation away.  Building and maintaining a permanent Moon base is an achievable goal that will show us whether human habitation beyond the Earth is feasible and profitable.  If it isn’t it’s better to learn that from a place where retreat takes a couple of days rather than a year.  Trillions of dollars and, more importantly, lives would be saved.

So, get going Mr. Musk.  Sell the boys in Washington a plan to build something like a town on the Moon.  You’ll make a whole lot of money and you’ll spark the imagination of a generation of boys whose grandfathers thrilled to the Apollo landings.  Just make sure you do a good job on the accounting so it won’t come back to haunt you when the Democrats come back into power.  They’re a vindictive bunch and they love to punish people whom they hate and from everything I’ve read they hate you now even more than they hate people like me.  And that’s a whole lot of hate anyway you stack it.

I have to confess I’m actually kind of excited to hear this goal.  I think he can get this done.  I’m guessing Trump would like to have his name involved in it too.  That quite a combination.

Bad Bunny Review

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Tyler over at the Portly Politico has bravely watched the Super Bowl Halftime in order that others could be spared the horror.  If you follow the link back you’ll find out what he thought.

I applaud his courage but I would not copy it.  Leaving organized sports in the rearview mirror was a wise move for me.  My stomach lining has benefitted magnificently from the decision.

Iron Lung (2026) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Today I went to see “Iron Lung” with grandson prime.  He is a big fan of the writer/director and star of the movie Mark Fischbach or as he’s known on YouTube, Markiplier.  Mark has about 35 million followers on YouTube and leveraging that much support he was able to make the movie with his own money (~ three million dollars) and get it distributed to over 3,000 theaters in the United States.  It’s been in the theaters for a couple of weeks and has made already something like thirty million dollars.  Estimates say it’ll end up at forty million dollars.  After giving the theaters half of this he’ll get twenty million dollars which is six times what he invested; an unheard-of return on investment for a motion picture in this day and age.

All very interesting.  How was the movie?

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Full disclosure.  This movie is not for anyone who doesn’t know the background “mythos” from the video game of the same name.  The visuals, the dialog, the “easter eggs” that the story revolves around will be difficult-to-impossible to understand without prior knowledge of the plot elements that only the die-hard fans of the game know beforehand.

The plot revolves around a convict being promised a reprieve if he will allow himself to be welded into a small submarine and dropped into an ocean of human blood that has been found on a “moon” somewhere out in interstellar space.  And this is being done in the hope that the convict will find something in this ocean to help explain and potentially remediate the result of the “Quiet Rapture.”  And what this refers to is the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of all the planets and stars that humanity had colonized in interstellar space.  The only humans remaining are one that were off-planet in space stations and ships.  This remnant of humanity is attempting to marshal its remaining numbers and resources to attempt to save the human race from extinction.

Once the prisoner (Simon) is submerged he looks for anything that could help explain the rapture.  And during his voyage he encounters harsh working conditions of the craft, hostile life, proof of the bad intentions of his mission handlers and the existence of some malevolent intelligence that is undermining his grasp on reality and even his sanity.

Eventually we discover that his handlers really never intended to rescue him at the end of the mission and we also discover that the intelligence he senses emanates from contact with the extra-dimensional creatures that killed off humanity and eliminated the stars and planets of our universe for the sake of their own plans for our space.  And the ocean of blood is all that remains of the murdered human race.

At the end, as both Simon and his handlers face destruction at the hands of these malevolent beings all he can do with his last efforts is eject from his submarine a flotation device carrying the records of what he’s discovered for the sake of some follow up mission that might try to use the knowledge gained to help mankind in some unspecified and apparently hopeless effort.

Wow, bleak!  As I said earlier, no one but fans of the creator of this movie will know what’s going on.  It’s too confusing and intentionally cryptic.  And talk about your depressing story.  This is the ultimate.  But at the same time there is a huge and enthusiastic fan base for just this story.  Mark’s viewers and the video game’s players are literally LEGION!  So, if you’re not in those categories you won’t and probably shouldn’t go to this movie.  And if you are you almost certainly will go and maybe several times with friends of the same persuasion for company.  And as I’ve said before this may be the beginning of a new way to make and target entertainment.  Gen Z likes its own things.  And they aren’t as interested as the Millennials in being preached to by movie studios about what they should like and what they shouldn’t.  And good for them.  The interesting thing is that Mark Fischbach wants to create more content that entertains his audience and produce other people’s stories for this audience.  Maybe I should send him my “screen play” for the “The Sniper.”

My Own Take on Super Sunday

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I had to postpone my trip to see “Iron Lung” with my grandson.  We got another six inches of snow between yesterday and today and had to spend the day clearing it.  And I really think the meteorological profession is retrogressing.  A couple of days ago they said we would get a “dusting.”  Some dusting!  And unfortunately for me the wind was wild.  I ended up with an ice beard and a frozen face.  But it’s done and tomorrow morning we’ll see what cosmic horror lurks at the bottom of an ocean of human blood!  I’ve read a bunch of reviews and what I’ve gleaned is that this is an homage to the video game of the same name and anyone who isn’t a fan of the game will find it a bit long (maybe quite a bit too long).  But that’s okay.  It will give me a chance to hang out with my grandson afterward and find out what he especially liked about it.

Basically, this movie is sort of the “Star Wars” of his generation.  Because it’s for them.  It’s a nerdy touchstone that they bond over.  So, I want to show deference to their choice of insider totem.  I want to get a sense of what they enjoy.  Should be interesting.

Going through the news is becoming goofier every day.  Apparently, Trump called the Obamas monkeys in some kind of video meme.  I think CBS was angry that Trump hadn’t apologized.  Well, calling Obama a monkey is kind of insensitive to monkeys.  As far as I know monkeys treat all humans equally.  Whereas the Obamas are anti-white racists, which I consider much worse than monkeys.  They’re awful human beings.  I hope Trump apologizes to monkeys for comparing them to the Obamas.

There was another article stating that Starlink has been shut off in Ukraine and now the Russians can’t control their drones.  The article made it sound like the Russians were cut off because they didn’t have legitimate accounts with Starlink.  So, does that mean that Putin was doing what most people’s young adult children do when they use their parents’ Netflix and Disney Plus accounts?  The idea that this war in which hundreds of thousands of men have been killed is being run on pirated GPS usage just seems a bridge too far.  Is this really what’s going on?  What’s next?  Will we find out that ChatGPT has been drafted by Putin and is running the battlefield strategy?

And of course, tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday.  I guess it must be at least seven years since I’ve watched a Super Bowl.  And honestly, I can’t imagine why I’ll ever bother watching it again.  And that goes for all of professional sports.  All the virtue signaling over race and homosexual identity have made all of it nauseating and I’d rather watch a test pattern than endure their nonsense.  I did see that Anheuser-Bush has put together some commercial for the Super Bowl that involves a Clydesdale horse befriending a bald eagle.  Well, the only thing I could think of was, “Which one is a stand-in for Dylan Mulvaney?”  I don’t think horses and eagles are going to get Bud Light their customer base back.  Enjoy your Sunday.