_____
Moi in 1993 to NASA: Let’s go back to the moon. Here, I’ve finished a study on how to do it with the goal of building a permanent outpost there like our South Pole Station.
NASA: No.
Moi in 1999: Let’s go back to the moon. Here, I’ve written a popular techno-thriller about it that everyone loves. They’ll love you all the more now if you say you’re going.
NASA: No.
Moi in 2019: Let’s go back to the moon. Here, VP Pence, is why.
Pence: OK. By any means necessary by 2024. Oh, and we need to have a person of color and a woman to land, too.
Moi in 2019: Um, OK, if that’s important.
Pence: It is.
Moi in 2019 to NASA: Don’t forget. By any means necessary by 2024.
NASA: Well, OK. Here’s our plan. We will build an underpowered but very expensive rocket we are afraid even to give a name to but we’ll call the SLS and then, at the same time, build a space station we’ll call Gateway in a lunar halo orbit – never mind how hard it was just to build one in earth orbit – and once it’s built and operational and stuff, SLS will struggle up to it with an old tin can called Orion which will hang around until a giant rocket called Starship can be refueled in space and soar up to get our astros (one poc, one woman, one tbd) and deposit them tail first on the moon, let them get out for awhile, then jump back up to Gateway, get back into the tincan Orion, and scoot back to Earth. What do you think about that?
Moi in 2024: You didn’t make the deadline.
NASA: Did you really think we would?
Moi in 2024: Not after I saw your Rube Goldberg [naughty word] plan!

https://x.com/realhomerhickam/status/1853501895819854027

“I was alive and I waited for this.
Right here, right now.
There is no other place I want to be,
Right here, right now.
Watching the world wake up from history.”

Man In The High Castle
Nazi-American Police
https://youtu.be/TFM2xZ7dytk
2:09
“I can’t even remember what we were fighting for…”

ASAP didn’t have anything to say about escape towers. Neither Crew Dragon nor Starliner have escape towers. Escape towers, in any case, have always been problematical – they get discarded part way through the booster phase of ascent and so provide no protection for booster issues that develop past the point of discard and no protection at all for any serious issue with a 2nd stage.

Astronauts have refused to fly on certain spacecraft, but not for reasons related to a lack of escape towers. Doug Hurley, for example, refused to have anything to do with Starliner but was happy to fly the first manned mission of Crew Dragon.

***

“Elon Musk @elonmusk
President @realDonaldTrump will save the squirrels
RIP P’Nut”
8:44 AM · Nov 2, 2024
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1852738470017700051

***

“I have information to lead to arrest of Hillary Clinton”
– P’Nut the Squirrel
https://t.ly/MvwPn