“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and we learned a tremendous amount about the vehicle and ground systems today that will help us improve on future flights of Starship. Thank you to our customers, Cameron County, and the wider community for the continued support and encouragement. And congratulations to the entire Space team on an exciting first flight test of Starship!”
— SpaceX statement 04.20.2023

“Where’s the KABOOM?
There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering KABOOM!”
— Marvin The Martian

So, I was hitting some sativa bud and banging my head on the table the other day trying to shake loose a decent France uprising cartoon, and THIS weirdness fell out. I’d given up on a France cartoon at the moment and was just doing my daily space geekery, reading about the spectacular SpaceX launch failure and the attendant “hah, I MEANT to do that” spin from SpaceX, when I found my train of thought wandering to the Twitter valuation crash and the Paid Blue Check shitshow and was suddenly, like…

…like, yeah; Musk was really laughing off the Twitter valuation and the hot mess about the paid Blue Check accounts that’s been all over the news lately, and then a day or two later another one of his goddamn Starship tests goes sideways on him and the SpaceX PAO flacks are babbling a bunch of balloon juice about how much they learned today, and it was one of those moments of inspiration and serendipity that screamed “quit twisting your panties trying to think of a France cartoon for a moment and jump on THIS shit, man! Here it is!” Like, yeah — crashing and burning, in metaphor and reality.

11 x 17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 420kb

Continue reading "A Successful Launch" »

So, Jeff Bezos thinks he can tug at my old Boomer heartstrings by sending up 90 year-old William Shatner (and his toupee) on Blue Origin’s latest suborbital joyride, while continuing to shit on his workers and dodge taxes. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has opened new vistas in whiny excuses for not paying taxes on his obscene wealth by puking up a bunch of balloon juice about Mars and “the light of consciousness”. Nice try, guys — but, no. Also a big “no” to these guys at the Space Review trying to spin it as an important insight into the effects of microgravity on old rich and famous people.

My plan is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2021

And elsewhere in the Space Review, one of their regulars can’t shut up about the “normalization of space tourism” — for anyone who’s so goddamn rich they have the price of a long weekend at the ISS lying around under their sofa cushions.

11×11 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.1 mb

Continue reading "For All Pigkind no.2: To Oligarchy, And Beyond!" »

In the space of about two weeks, I’m hit with the news that trillionaire serial worker abuser Jeff Bezos has found someone willing to throw down $28 mil for a suborbital joyride with him — and that Elon Musk will refuse to recognize Earth laws in his gated suburbs on Mars. Doubtless Musk will have some Space Force grunts on-call to keep a lid on things out there.

I’m especially bugged that Bezos has chosen July 20 as his launch date; I’m sure he thinks he’s making some deep statement or something, but instead I’m just insulted somehow. Christ, 28 million dollars to go suborbital with Jeff Friggin’ Bezos. Bah, I’d rather ride Apollo 13.

11×16 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.1mb

Continue reading "For All Pigkind" »

This was initially inspired by this article on Sputnik International, about the six military bases up for consideration for Space Force headquarters. After some curious digging, I’ve noticed they’ve gone from “Mars Awaits” to the slightly more modest “back to the Moon in 5 years”. Of course, the goal that’s grabbing the attention of millions of us is VP Man From GLAD’s consideration of nuclear weapons deployment in space.

Goes without saying Elon Musk is on board with the idea; I’m guessing his long game will involve a need for a few hundred Space Grunts to guard his gated Martian colonies for the rich.

11×17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.6mb

Continue reading "Space Force no.2: Mars Awaits" »