Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

projectpluto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 89 posts

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#11

Post by account42 »

xnx wrote: post #7
sheept wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It wasn't a good idea even in 2008.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#12

Post by barbazoo »

ilamont wrote: post #2

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 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 s…

And it's so fast even with pictures. I miss the old internet.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#13

Post by barbazoo »

sheept wrote: post #3
ilamont wrote: post #2

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 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 s…

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.

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.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#14

Post by norenh »

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.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#15

Post by deadbabe »

ilamont wrote: post #2

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 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 s…

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.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#16

Post by recursive »

sheept wrote: post #3
ilamont wrote: post #2

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 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 s…

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.

This sounds like a critique of mobile browsers. Make friendliness the default!

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#17

Post by tekla »

clort wrote: post #8

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?

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.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#18

Post by dopamean »

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.

Re: Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

#19

Post by ck2 »

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)

Post reply on HN