Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

(projectpluto.com)

89 points | by ryannevius 4 hours ago

8 comments

  • ilamont 2 hours ago
    I love this page. Text, photos, links. Straight up HTML 4, maybe even using a template in a text editor and FTPed to go live. I didn't see any inline or referenced CSS. No scripts. No ads. No social junk. The home page even has a <table> just like it's 1994.

    What are the drawbacks to reverting to this type web publishing? That's how I used to do things before publishing tools and CMS and platforms took over, but I know the security landscape has changed quite a bit, and such pages are always in the deep long tail of Google results (and therefore practically invisible to AI summaries, which often surface complete junk as sources).

    • sheept 2 hours ago
      The main drawback with the page's unstyled design is that the page is not mobile friendly.

      Publishing web pages by manually editing HTML files is still very common today; any GitHub Pages blog does this.

      • xnx 1 hour ago
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> is the only thing keeping this page from being mobile friendly.

        Having that not be the browser default was a good idea in 2008, but not now.

        • zahlman 30 minutes ago
          I don't have a smartphone to test on. What happens without this?
          • xnx 6 minutes ago
            If you want to see it for yourself: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode
          • oakesm9 26 minutes ago
            You essentially see the desktop version zoomed out by default with tiny text. You need to zoom in, but the line length is still desktop sized so you need to scroll left and right as well as up and down to read it.
        • account42 1 hour ago
          It wasn't a good idea even in 2008.
      • recursive 1 hour ago
        This sounds like a critique of mobile browsers. Make friendliness the default!
      • burkaman 1 hour ago
        It's obviously not designed for mobile but I wouldn't call it unfriendly, it's still fast and pretty easy to read. It also works perfectly with Firefox reader mode.
      • childofhedgehog 33 minutes ago
        What part of this is actually not mobile friendly? I’d argue this is laid out pretty well compared to some websites that are “mobile friendly” but load poorly or make it impossible to scroll.
      • Krssst 1 hour ago
        Firefox's reader mode works really well on the article, I wonder why it's not the default for unstyled pages.
      • barbazoo 1 hour ago
        That's a feature for me, not a bug. Not everything has to be everything-friendly all the time, especially if it makes it easier to consume content or stuff.

        Edit: I'm forgetting about certain accessibility issues, although I'm not sure this plain page isn't a good fit for accessibility tools.

    • zahlman 32 minutes ago
      We get submissions like this fairly commonly (we also get ones that are "modern" but use hand-crafted CSS, use only un-minified first-party-written JS for progressive enhancement, etc.). But a large fraction of them are about the style as well as exhibiting it.

      The main drawback seems to be that larger communities than HN will, at best, not care.

    • barbazoo 1 hour ago
      And it's so fast even with pictures. I miss the old internet.
    • deadbabe 1 hour ago
      You could easily make a browser extension that passes each page through an AI agent that will rewrite the page in the given style. It’s fun.
  • sixtyj 1 hour ago
    > Over 600 Falcon 9 rockets have been launched. Most of the upper stages are either in orbits close to the earth or have already re-entered the earth's atmosphere. A few are orbiting the sun. The object that will be hitting the moon has been orbiting the earth for a little over a year.
  • dopamean 58 minutes ago
    After so much time hearing about how SpaceX dumps rocket debris all over Boca Chica it's kind of amusing that they're also leaving trash on the moon. It would be cool if we sent people back to the moon one day and they took photos next to junk like this. Or whatever is left of it.
    • ralfd 27 minutes ago
      There is not much rocket debris in Boca Chica. If you do find something sell it on ebay.
    • tekla 49 minutes ago
      You realize we've been smashing shit into the moon since Apollo right?

      Also you know the literal trash bags of trash and poop that Apollo dumped overboard.

      This smashing into the the moon will leave a random crater, and last time I checked, lots of craters on the moon.

  • norenh 1 hour ago
    Welp, my initial thought based on the link was that this was part of Project Pluto:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

    https://web.archive.org/web/20200329022906/http://www.merkle...

    It is not... This is a Falcon-9 rocket stage, not a part from the Flying Crowbar or any similar nightmare-device.

  • glimshe 50 minutes ago
    Soon we'll need to call Roger Wilco to take care of all this junk.
  • clort 1 hour ago
    something they didn't mention, what is in this upper stage? I'm presuming a rocket motor and some fuel is that right..? They do a calculation of energy release on impact, but I'm wondering if there is any fuel left and whether that would affect their equation?
    • tekla 59 minutes ago
      I can't really think of much besides maybe some batteries. The fuel and oxidizer are supposed to be dumped shortly after payload deployment to prevent any issues with blowing up. Even if it wasn't dumped, its been a year, so it would have boiled off.
  • ck2 53 minutes ago
    someone send them a littering bill

    sadly one day hundreds of years from now parts of the moon will look like all the garbage left on Everest (and maybe even the dead frozen bodies too, moon dust is sticky and very sharp apparently)

    • 1970-01-01 16 minutes ago
      That's the neat thing. Dumping on the moon or anywhere (other than Earth) isn't possible, as the litter is infinitely more valuable than the existing dust and rock. It's as if someone was dumping gold bricks into your yard. You really wouldn't mind at all, and would ask for more. The only exception would be radioactive waste, as that is less valuable than the surrounding dust and rock.
  • tempodox 39 minutes ago
    > though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of.

    My thoughts exactly.