Yesterday's Future-Space Settlements In the Sky

Nat Geo space In 1976, Isaac Asimov published an article in National Geographic magazine about a 2026 visit to a giant space station. The article was illustrated by the late Pierre Mion. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) Yesterday’s Future: space settlement and castles in the sky by Dwayne A. Day Monday, June 8, 2026 Fifty years ago this week, millions of Americans opened up their mailboxes to find the July issue of National Geographic, giving them their first introduction to the idea of cities in space. The issue contained an article by Isaac Asimov about life on a giant space station 50 years in the future—the mysterious and exotic year of 2026. For most of the 20th century National Geographic was one of the primary ways that Americans learned about the rest of the world, as well as different cultures within the United States. July 1976 was the American bicentennial and National Geographic’s editors chose that issue to include a vision of America’s future 50 years hence. Nat Geo space The July 1976 issue of National Geographic celebrated the United States Bicentennial. It featured a number of articles looking towards America's future, including the far-distant year of 2026. (credit: National Geographic) Asimov’s inspiration was clear: in 1974 Gerard K. O’Neill had begun organizing conferences on the subject of space settlements—then generally referred to as “colonies”—and servicing solar power satellites. Some of his enthusiastic followers formed the L-5 Society in 1975, and by early 1976 O’Neill had reached such prominence with the subject that he testified before the US Senate. His book The High Frontier was not published until 1977, however, and it seems likely that more people were exposed to the concept of space cities and solar power satellites by Isaac Asimov in the pages of National Geographic—whose subscription base was over six million in the mid-1970s—than were exposed to it via O’Neill’s book or other writings. Nat Geo space The space station was not fully self-sufficient, but grew much of its own food. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) Asimov’s article, “The Next Frontier?,” illustrated by Pierre Mion, was written as a first-person account of a visit to an L-5 colony in the far-distant future of 2026. The account is mostly description: the National Geographic reporter is met by the settlement’s director, George Fenton, who shows him around and explains how everything works. Asimov experiences the gradual onset of simulated gravity as he travels from the arrival hub down a spoke to the station’s rim. The space station is nearly 1,800 meters in diameter and houses 10,000 people. Fenton shows him the farms and the industrial areas. He introduces the reporter to a rabbit meat hot dog and goat milk shake. He explains how the population is majority male, but they do have women, and families, and even a thousand children on the station. He shows the reporter a residential area and explains that the streets curve back and forth so that you cannot see them end and become disoriented. Fenton explains how the six segments of the torus are separated by airlocks in case of emergency. The space city is not completely self-contained but is working on it. They still import things from Earth, but most of their raw materials come from the Moon. They recycle everything that they can; the reporter declines Fenton’s offer to tour the sewage plant. Nat Geo space The giant cities in space were constructed with raw materials obtained from the Moon and flung into space with mass drivers. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) Then, of course, there is the explanation of how all of this is possible. The manufacturing of solar power stations to supply Earth is a major economic driver, but “old news” according to Fenton. Instead, their newest industry is the growing of crystals and the manufacture of microcomputer circuitry. But, Fenton adds, for a long time to come the primary activity of the settlers will be building other settlements. Asimov adds that it will be a long time, if ever, before the population of the space settlements exceeds the population of Earth. The article was fiction, and Asimov did not bother to delve into the economics. Who paid all the up-front capital costs to build all of this? Although Asimov’s future reporter never made it to the manufacturing center, or the lunar mining facility, Mion’s paintings depicted them as well as the construction of the space station itself. The lunar mining facility came equipped with a linear accelerator that fires the collected material up to a manufacturing station. The mining is described in a caption as “sandbox simple” and the regolith is scooped up from open-face pits and sent on its way. Nat Geo space A massive lunar infrastructure supported the construction of cities and solar power stations. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) Lest anyone think that this article was “science fiction” (the editor placed that term in quotes, somewhat in the same way that you put a dead fish in a trash bag), a footnote declares that in only a month’s time NASA would publish a new report: “Space Colonization: A Design Study”. Clearly, space settlements were a probable part of America’s future. After all, a lot could happen by the time of America’s semiquincentennial. Nat Geo space New stations were under construction. The concept of an expansive space infrastructure was inspired by Gerard K. O'Neill. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) The Future was wonderful One of the common knocks against science fiction stories is that they do a poor job of predicting the future. Critics gloated that the year 2001 came and went and there were no spinning space stations, only terrorism and falling towers. Of course, the legitimate defense is that science fiction writers are not trying to predict the future, only tell a story (and sometimes to warn of a future to be avoided.) But in the case of Asimov’s National Geographic article, the famed author was trying to predict what looked—in that heady bicentennial year—to be a realistic possible future only a few decades away. The July 1976 issue also included an article titled “Five Noted Thinkers Explore the Future”: interviews with experts, including Asimov, speculating about the turn of the century, only 25 years away. Their predictions were a mixed bag, but a common theme was a focus on the future of the city, at a time when American cities were in crisis. New York, after all, had nearly declared bankruptcy a year before and a few years later would be portrayed as a maximum-security prison in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. In his interview, Asimov speculated that cities would either go down, or up. Weather might drive the creation of underground cities where climate could be perpetually controlled and inhabitants would never have to worry about pesky things like thunderstorms, snow, or beautiful spring days. Or the cities could go upward, with the creation of giant rotating space cities at L-5 points deep out in space. Asimov did not write about the spread of the suburbs, or the exurbs. After all, he wanted cities in space. Nat Geo space The giant space station housed 10,000 people. (credit: Pierre Mion, National Geographic) Although he never said it in his interview or the article, Asimov was writing about the ideas of an emerging American social movement. His article reflected the influences of people like Gerard K. O’Neill (who is not mentioned) and the then-exciting concept that normal people—construction workers, welders, farmers, rabbit-slaughterers—could soon live and work in space. Pierre Mion’s illustrations of the space station show a gleaming city street that looks much like a midwestern American city, or a shopping mall, where the dominant male fashion is the jumpsuit, and women still wear miniskirts and denim short-shorts. Within a very short time after Asimov’s article, O’Neill would publish The High Frontier, the L-5 Society would gain more members, and the pro-space settlement idea would form into a genuine movement. But then it died. Or less harshly, it never grew beyond a few thousand daydreamers. Why did the space settlement concept fail to gain a mass following? And why didn’t space settlements happen? These two questions are linked. Space technology never moved as fast as some people hoped or wanted or predicted, so the dream was forever out of reach. But it also was never a very appealing dream to begin with. Space technology never moved as fast as some people hoped or wanted or predicted, so the dream was forever out of reach. But it also was never a very appealing dream to begin with. Looking back over five decades to a time when this movement was just forming, the most glaring conclusion is that the idea never really caught on. It never transformed into a true mass movement with broad appeal, millions of members, elected representatives in the government, and a clear legislative, social, and economic agenda that could push the technology harder and faster. Why was that? Of course, many of the movement’s early members eventually blamed NASA. O’Neill’s space vision depended upon cheap spaceflight heralded by the Space Shuttle, and we all know how that worked out. Certainly, once the shuttles proved to be cranky and expensive, a lot of public enthusiasm for space settlement subsided. Some people stuck with it, and became bitter (taking their anger out on internet discussion groups and, later, social media). Many simply gave up. The space settlement movement was, at its most basic, a utopian movement. Like all utopian movements, it had a short-term appeal that was more emotional than logical, and depended upon people being susceptible to the vision that it promised. It didn’t make many converts. There was a problem with that vision: it was not inherently positive and uplifting. There were certainly many negative visions at the time: Malthusian predictions of doom, and the ever-present fear of nuclear annihilation. But the problem with the space settlement movement was that, absent the counterpoint of fear, it had little inherent appeal. Asimov’s portrayal of the L-5 future demonstrated the problem: what was so great about living and working in space compared to living and working on the ground? How was it any better? Asimov didn’t have an answer to that. He never described the view from the settlement, nor did he claim that the working and living conditions were superior to Earth, for instance, a four-day work week and longer paid vacations. Asimov’s description of the food was not exactly enticing. What he described was a job and a bed to sleep in, not strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations. If you were an ordinary American reading National Geographic in 1976, what was so great about that? There is an old joke about a company that makes a new kind of dog food. It invests millions in advertising and getting its product in stores. But it doesn’t sell. Befuddled, the company president goes to a store and watches people buy other bags of dog food. He goes up to the store manager. “I don’t get it,” he says. “Our packaging is flashier than our competitors’ packaging. Our display is the biggest in the store. It’s the most attractive dog food there is. Why isn’t it selling?” “The dogs don’t like it,” replies the manager. Nat Geo space Pierre Mion, who died in 2021, in his studio (credit: Dave Ginsberg) The Future, it was wonderful, but what is it now? Of course, many of the most strident advocates of space settlements will claim that the reason to go is to establish a new society with new rules and liberties, without explaining how this will be possible considering the survival requirements of a settlement in a hostile environment. The economics of a settlement naturally tend to require rather strict rules—the company or government that funds such an endeavor is not going to want surly employees who cannot stand authority figures and waste hot water. If your goal is to throw off unwanted rules and regulations, it is easier to achieve this by joining or leading a political movement—or simply moving to Alaska—than launching a million tons of payload into a hostile environment. At its best, the space settlement vision was sophisticated daydreaming, not a future that a large number of Americans wanted to make happen. The vision had its shot and never caught on. Space historian Emily Carney notes that O’Neill thought some other things might be important too. In his book 2081, which was published five years after The High Frontier, he wrote: “Here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.” In other words, if you are concerned about liberty and democracy, protect it on Earth first. That advice is very prescient for 2026. At its best, the space settlement vision was sophisticated daydreaming, not a future that a large number of Americans wanted to make happen. The vision had its shot and never caught on, despite appearing in the pages of a highly reputable magazine and gaining the attention of political decision makers. Gravity, weightlessness, radiation, and economics may all have ultimately made this vision untenable, but its biggest problem was that people didn’t like it. Has that changed? A young Jeff Bezos was enticed by the vision of moving factories into space to preserve a blue Earth, but nobody really considers him to be a prophet more than a businessman. Some would argue that SpaceX is committed to establishing human cities on Mars. But how many people truly believe that anymore? SpaceX is about to hold an initial public offering, and the company has described itself as an AI company with a rocket business that loses money. SpaceX does not describe itself as a Mars settlement company and has been drifting off the space settlement goal for years, first creating Starlink, then focusing more on the Moon to serve a paying customer, now spending massive amounts on AI and investing in data centers There’s little evidence that SpaceX is doing anything to establish cities on Mars. And even if they were, how many people actually want to live on Mars anyways? Mars settlement was the rage last decade but now seems to be going the same way as O’Neill’s giant spinning cities in the void. There’s little evidence that SpaceX is doing anything to establish cities on Mars. And even if they were, how many people actually want to live on Mars anyways? We are today—this very day—living in the future that National Geographic’s experts speculated about. The cities are all right. World War III is no longer looming overhead. But American democracy is increasingly in peril, and Americans are not turning to grand visions of space settlement. Emily Carney added that she once interviewed astronaut Phil Chapman, who had been a contemporary of O'Neill's and knew him. Chapman said, “I thought Gerry was both charismatic and brilliant, but perhaps too imaginative for his own good.” Chapman had an amusing story about O’Neill: “I remember attending a congressional hearing where Gerry talked about his ideas. The chairman of the committee expressed his deep thanks to Gerry—because, he said, he had been considering an item about space colonization in the NASA budget, and he was now persuaded that funding could be postponed for a century or two." Maybe 2176 will be better.

The US Space Force Is Building New Bases

Schreiver Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado, one of the Space Force facilities that plays key roles in military space operations. (credit: US Space Force photo by Dalton Prejeant) America’s most exposed power projection platforms Why United States Space Force installations must be treated as warfighting infrastructure by David G. Hanson Monday, June 8, 2026 The United States Space Force (USSF) is unique among the military services not merely because it operates in space, but also because it fights from fixed locations on Earth while delivering effects globally and continuously. Unlike Army brigades, Navy strike groups, Marine Corps expeditionary units, or Air Force wings that deploy into theaters of operation, the Space Force overwhelmingly executes its missions through an employed-in-place operational concept, where combat operations are conducted from permanent installations on U.S. and allied soil. This reality fundamentally alters the strategic importance of Space Force installations. Unlike a deployed airbase or naval forward operating location that supports a specific campaign, Space Force installations are the campaign. Space Force Bases such as Peterson, Schriever, Buckley, Patrick/Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, and others are not rear area support hubs: they are power projection platforms, executing around-the-clock space control, satellite communications, missile warning, intelligence, navigation warfare, access to space, and command and control in real time. If these installations fail, space effects cease immediately, with cascading consequences across all domains of warfare. Yet, USSF installations are still too often resourced, protected, and governed as traditional military installations, rather than as critical nodes of continuous global combat operations. This mismatch poses a serious national security risk. Why Space Force installations are operationally unique Space Force doctrine explicitly distinguishes space forces from other services by emphasizing that space missions are predominantly executed from fixed locations rather than forward deployed units. The Space Force’s Space Force Generation (SPAFORGEN) model formalizes this reality, noting that most combat squadrons are “employed in place,” continuously providing effects to combatant commanders without physical movement of forces. This means there is no rotational buffer between peacetime and wartime operations. Guardians perform some of the same operations to ensure peace as they do during conflict. Also, Space Force installations are in a constant commit phase posture for portions of the force. Outside of the operations centers, it looks the same. Food is served in the dining hall, ID cards are checked at the front gate, and personnel are seen at the medical clinics. However, inside those space operations center, strategic missions are performed and often against an enemy who never disappears. Finally, infrastructure, power, heating and cooling, and cyber connectivity are part of the weapon system, not mere enablers. When these are negatively affected, missions degrade. The Space Force’s employed-in-place operational model fundamentally changes the meaning of “installation.” Unlike a deployed airbase or naval forward operating location that supports a specific campaign, Space Force installations are the campaign. From a single Space Force installation, Guardians provide continuous missile warning and tracking. They enable or deny global navigation and timing and support joint targeting and kill chains. They provide assured access to space. Further, they monitor and contest adversary space maneuvers. Finally, Guardians today maintain global command and control for space operations. Adversaries, such as China and Russia, are increasingly pursuing strategies that target the terrestrial foundations of space power rather than satellites alone. Referred to as the “soft underbelly,” these targets include cyberattacks against ground systems and the lines to and from them, electromagnetic disruption against a terrestrial antenna or radar, supply chain interference, and energy grid denial. How did we get here? Applying legacy installation funding, protection, and governance models has created systemic risks. The underinvestment in energy resilience has led to a dependency on municipal power sources. Believe me, local power companies provide a valuable service and are patriots themselves. However, their systems are often not protected from outside intrusion. They are just not set up for that kind of defense or the cost of resilience. Further, insufficient cyber-physical integration directly affects space operations. It is all about the 1s and 0s. Receiving data from terrestrial sensors and from spacecraft allow Guardians to do their jobs of analyzing this data and quickly responding to anomalies and adversary actions. When the priority is placed on exquisite weapon systems, the first things cut from budgets are mission support activities: projects and initiatives that keep the bases running in peacetime and resilient during conflict. Moreover, as space operations are constantly occurring, should an outage occur, slow recovery timelines are incompatible with combat operations. How do we recover from a power outage? What is the resolution to a damaged or cut fiber optic cable carrying sensitive data? What actions are taken when a cooling air system suddenly powers down causing equipment racks to heat up? Time is of the essence in all of these situations to not only respond to actions in the space domain but to prevent equipment damage resulting in mission degradation and failure. When the priority is placed on exquisite weapon systems, the first things cut from budgets are mission support activities: projects and initiatives that keep the bases running in peacetime and resilient during conflict. No doubt, we need the best weapon systems to monitor adversary actions in space as well as to maintain the capability to strike. The US space enterprise does a fantastic job at designing and delivering these systems to our warfighters. Budgets are passed with these exquisite systems in mind. What is lost, though, is focus on the systems that allow weapon systems to function day in and day out, without interruption. The assumption is that these support systems will always be there, providing power, cooling air, and cyber connectivity 24/7. We do have a fantastic group of civil engineers and communication professionals who maintain these systems. But they spend an inordinate amount of time and effort finding ways to keep aging systems alive way past their lifespans. And what happens when the enemy decides to degrade these systems with a cyberattack or a precise cut on a power or cyber line? We are not prepared for these attacks much less protecting these systems from these kinds of attacks. The fallacy of “installations as rear areas” Traditional US military installation models assume that bases are logistical hubs or training centers. These are places where warfighters and their families live, train, and practice their tradecraft. But when tensions rise or a conflict surfaces, those warfighters and their equipment move forward, closer to the conflict. Home bases exist to support missions that are sent elsewhere, where the conflict is or where the forces are required. This model assumes combat power is generated elsewhere. In these cases, mission degradation from base disruption is either delayed or recoverable. These assumptions are invalid in the Space Force. Department of Defense instructions on installation resilience highlight that mission assurance must now account for energy, water, cyber, and extreme weather vulnerabilities. While keeping these aging systems operational during peacetime is a daunting and often losing effort, imagine fighting through adversary’s attempts to disrupt, disable, or deny critical infrastructure during escalated tensions. For the Space Force, these vulnerabilities directly affect combat capability. Communication lines are the circulatory system of space weapon systems, both physical fiber lines and over-the air electromagnetic signals. They keep our satellites flying, ensure we are able to communicate, and carry data between sensors and operation centers. When these lines are interrupted, the mission is degraded. When they are sliced at key chokepoints, the mission stops. The most important person on the base was the HVAC technician. Usually without a backup, this lone technician was the lynchpin between the US providing space power and mission failure. Only they could diagnose, repair, and bring back online the chiller units in case of an outage. There is an ongoing argument about where mission communication lines end and where base-level communication lines begin. This in turn determines who is protecting them. When we consider all communication lines critical—from inside an operations center, traversing throughout the base, or extending across America and under the oceans—and protect them equally, we are protecting the entire mission. How many times did we have to react to a backhoe cutting a key fiber optic line in rural America? The answer is too many. The effects to space missions in Colorado were instantaneous, but the repairs were never fast enough. And what happens when those are not “accidental” cuts, but strategically planned by an adversary? Chiller systems provide cooling air to equipment racks in server rooms. These are the backbone of space force weapon systems. When the chillers go down, temperatures in those server rooms rise, and these equipment racks are then systematically shut down to prevent overheating and permanent damage. The result is immediate mission failure. A story I often told involved who I dubbed was the most important person on Schriever Space Force Base on a Saturday night. When the base was mostly quiet except for the Guardians on watch performing space operations, and a few Airmen and civilians providing base security, communication and infrastructure support, the most important person was the HVAC technician. Usually without a backup, this lone technician was the lynchpin between the US providing space power and mission failure. Only they could diagnose, repair, and bring back online the chiller units in case of an outage. This singular, and often junior, technician is a strategic asset. Doctrine is clear: space is a warfighting domain, and Guardians must contest and control it continuously to protect joint force operations. Space Force installations are therefore forward combat nodes, even when located inside the continental United States. Funding and protection priorities, now and in the future Immediate and continual attention and prioritized funding to Space Force installations is necessary to keep them running today. But just as important is ensuring base resiliency when challenged by an adversary. Four “pillars” emerge as to where resources should be focused now. If Congress increases Space Force funding in fiscal year 2027, a share of this funding must be directed at these efforts. The first of these is Energy Independence and Resilience. Power is life for Space Force weapon systems. Without it, they are a dark and cold network of components and wires. Backup power is also essential but providing clean, uninterrupted primary power is a primary concern. Analyzing current commercial power grids, the number of feeds on each base, and the state of backup power are strong first steps. Supplanting with microgrids, on site generation, and long-duration backup power cements the protection of power as a weapon-system dependency. Next is Hardening and Redundant Infrastructure. When infrastructure facilities such as power production, chiller areas, server rooms, and accompanying control systems were designed, what thought was put into ensuring they are safe from outside interference? Physical protection is one consideration but so is cyber security, electromagnetic interference, and diverse fiber cable paths. These engineering facilities must be designed for continuous operations under attack. There must be geographic and functional redundancy for critical mission nodes. This is important at all Space Force installations but consider the importance at our spaceports. There are only two major ones now. Degrading or shutting down even one of them prevents the US from launching new payloads into orbit today and reconstituting damaged or inactive satellites during a conflict. This call also supports the ongoing spaceport expansion and modernization initiatives. Failure to properly resource Space Force installations may not result in gradual degradation. Instead, it may result in sudden operational collapse as aged infrastructures crumble or when the adversary makes bad things happen by simply pushing the Enter button. Further, Cyber Physical Security Integration must continue to evolve and expand to counter threats. Our cyber professionals will tell you that we are in constant conflict in the cyber domain, warding off thousands of intrusion attempts every day. When these intensify during increased tensions, are we able to keep our weapon systems and infrastructure control systems safe? A well-rounded, unified defense of networks, facilities, and personnel can prevent this. We must treat Space Force installations as contested cyber terrain. The addition of AI data centers dedicated to missions and/or installations will assist in this effort. Finally, Personnel Sustainability cannot be overlooked. Guardians and Airmen, both military and civilian alike, are the keys to making this work. They work long hours, create unique solutions to solve complex challenges, and are in a constant state of combat operations. Taking care of them and their families, including shift-work resilience, adequate staffing levels, housing, healthcare, and retention mechanisms, will help sustain their resilience now and into the future. These professionals are not deployable “surges,” but rather, enduring combat operators and must be treated as such. Future investment priorities And beyond FY27, investments in base resiliency cannot be a one-time fix. Installation design standards should be based on mission assurance, not peacetime efficiency. Will this facility, node, ot utility survive first contact with the enemy? Do we have the ability to develop rapid repair and reconstitution capabilities for when we are degraded or disabled? How can we get back into the fight now? Let us not shy away from fielded industry capabilities but instead, welcome a seamless integration of proven commercial infrastructure. Finally, and just as important, is for future weapon systems and weapon system extension programs to mandate the inclusion of infrastructure considerations before they are fielded. Can the current power system support another weapon system, or does it need to be updated or enhanced? Are there enough infrastructure technicians available to support the additional power, chiller, and communication requirements? What other mission support activities need to be increased to support future enhancements? The consequences of inaction Failure to properly resource Space Force installations may not result in gradual degradation. Instead, it may result in sudden operational collapse as aged infrastructures crumble or when the adversary makes bad things happen by simply pushing the Enter button. This is a reality we face, despite the heroic efforts of today’s civil engineers, security forces, and cyber/communication experts who magically “duct tape and band-aid” these systems, keeping them operating way beyond their operational lifespan. If installations lose power, connectivity, cooling air, or cyber networks, joint force targeting becomes blind or delayed, space control operations falter, and deterrence fails without a shot fired. As Space Force Doctrine bluntly states, “Without space, kill chains do not close, operations are less synchronized, and we lose.” During my time at Space Base Delta 1, we were fortunate to receive tens of millions of dollars each fiscal year to support the infrastructure we operated and maintained at the seven Space Force bases under our umbrella. But even with those funds, we were only able to replace, and usually just repair, a limited number of critical infrastructure systems at each base. Despite resources earmarked for infrastructure and our due diligence keeping them working, we still experienced unplanned power outages, chiller failures, cut fiber optic lines, and water main breaks. These infrastructure failures were the result of aging and insufficient systems. We need to be better and protect against not just “bad luck” but potential adversary intrusion. A good news story The selection of Buckley Space Force Base for a nuclear microreactor pilot program reflects a growing recognition that energy resilience is mission critical for space power projection, not merely an efficiency measure. This is the right first step towards ensuring uninterrupted space power projection. But this should only be the start. Equipping other Space Force bases (and other military installations) with this type of resilient power is the logical next step. Let us not allow power resiliency to overshadow the other infrastructure needs that are just as critical. Secure data centers, resilient communication lines, and protected infrastructure control systems must certainly follow. A call to action The United States has rightfully invested billions of dollars in space systems, satellites, and architectures, yet these capabilities remain hostage to the resilience of a small number of terrestrial installations. Officially recognizing Space Force installations as forward warfighting infrastructure and resourcing them accordingly would start to right the ship. These installations must be protected as strategic assets. We must govern them with authorities aligned to global combat responsibility. Failure to act will not merely degrade space capabilities—it risks silencing them altogether at the moment they are needed most. The fight for space superiority does not begin in orbit. It begins—or ends—at the installations on Earth that make space power possible. Colonel David Hanson is a retired US Space Force officer who took great pride in commanding multiple units and installations during his 30-year career in the Space Force and Air Force. Most recently, he was the commander of Space Base Delta 1, the largest Delta organization in the US Space Force, encompassing 3,600 personnel (mostly Airmen) at seven Space Force installations worldwide. In that position, he was the Base Commander at Peterson Space Force Base (SFB), Schriever SFB, and Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station (SFS), plus responsibilities running Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base) Greenland, New Boston SFS, Ka’ena Point SFS, and the Maui Space Surveillance Complex. In previous assignments, Colonel Hanson was the Commander of the 821st Air Base Group and Base Commander at Thule Air Base Greenland and also was the Commander of the 23rd Space Operations Squadron and the Base Commander at New Boston AFS New Hampshire. Colonel Hanson leads DGH Consulting LLC. His passion lies in supporting the warfighter.

Why The Vagueness Of The Space Treaty Was A Strategically Calculated Move

OST signing ceremony Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin, UK Ambassador Sir Patrick Dean, US Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and US President Lyndon B. Johnson at the signing of the Outer Space Treaty on January 27, 1967 in Washington. (credit: British Pathé) Why the vagueness of the Outer Space Treaty was a strategically calculated move by Aditya Raj Monday, June 8, 2026 The NASA-led Artemis program is ramping up to return humans to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. These mission are within the framework of the Artemis Accords. It is not just about where the OST needs reform, but also about why the treaty was framed this way, leaving the door open for interpretations of its vague terms. These accords reaffirm the principles of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) that are frequently criticized as outdated and geopolitically ambiguous. Yet it’s worth noting that the same criticisms of the treaty’s vague terms helped sustain the primary objective of intergovernmental cooperation and peace. This has occurred even without any major political animosity from the Cold War era to the present. Peaceful relations among spacefaring nation-states are achieved through the stable legal framework for space activities provided by the OST. From an analytical perspective, and to properly understand the core foundation of any treaty, an essential question arises. It is not just about where the OST needs reform, but also about why the treaty was framed this way, leaving the door open for interpretations of its vague terms. If the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 can evolve through additional agreements, conventions, and protocols to become a comprehensive, legally binding framework known as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) to govern Antarctica, why not the OST? Both were established during the Cold War through negotiations, and both govern areas beyond national sovereignty. Yet the OST has undergone minimal institutional change, whereas the ATS has witnessed institutional expansion. International relations and realist power politics, which underpin the very heart of today’s statecraft, can provide insight, making the OST’s vagueness not a flaw but a design feature. In the early 16th century, Niccolò Machiavelli popularized a pragmatic approach to statecraft in his book The Prince, which later influenced the emergence of political realism (classical), shifting the moral and ethical grounds to prioritize the state’s interest in survival and progress. National decision-makers make strategic calculations before signing a treaty, allowing the possibility of accommodation or changing future interests. The early stages of both the OST and ATS were the same; however, the divergence between them is associated with the provision of timely updates. Historical background The launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 sparked global debate over the legal, scientific, and political implications of outer space exploration. The startled response led to the establishment of the ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). In 1967, the OST—officially known as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies—entered into force. This multilateral international treaty sets out the major agreed-upon rules for the use of space technology when spacefaring capabilities were limited to the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The response was to limit the research and development of technologies that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. As that tense period was in the valley between two peaks, the Cuban Missile Crisis had already happened, and the nuclear buildup of the 1970s and 1980s was unfolding. When COPUOS was formed, it lacked a periodic rectification mechanism. Although Article XV provides a provision for amendments, it is nonbinding and appears to be merely a recommendation. It is a major loophole that can be flexed as required. The concerns about the credibility of the OST Advanced technologies are emerging so rapidly that it is difficult to frame a coherent legal structure. and especially cannot be fully stated in just a seven-page document of 17 articles. For once, the limited technological advancement of that time might be the factor associated with the vague construct. The point to keep in mind was that it was not a static doctrine, formulated for a limited time, but instead a lasting, multinational, aspirational, dynamic one. The formation of extraterritoriality and international ownership treaties depends on a state’s overall interests. which often conflict with others. The scientists, diplomats, and other foundational fathers might have envisioned and encountered the issue that the OST would need to address over time as the treaty entered into force. On the American side, the Apollo program was shaping its trajectory toward landing humans on the Moon. Their target, as declared by President John F. Kennedy, was before the end of the decade (the 1960s). The Soviet Union and the United States competed intensely in the Space Race to be the first to achieve many milestones, including sending the first human, the first woman, and even animals into space, launching spy satellites, and conducting the first spacewalk. Even more, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, China, and India were also beginning to establish dedicated institutions for outer space research, unequivocally to become spacefaring nations. So, it’s evident that the provision for updates was critical to this treaty, but less emphasis was given to it. The most probable reason for not being updated and ratified can be attributed to reasons including but not limited to: Progress is essential. A sovereign nation-state doesn’t want to restrict its growth in the security domain. Simultaneously, it wanted to constrain strategic competition. The self-centric worldview gives rise to the Thucydides Trap. It is a situation where a rising power threatens to replace a dominant power, and this tension often leads to war. During the Cold War, the conflict was between the US and Soviet Union. Now it’s among the USA and its allies, with Russia and China. This underscores the purpose of constructing the OST as a broad, deliberately open-ended treaty, that does not constrain any far-fetched dual-use military implications, reducing the possibility it backfires on the national space interests of a nation-state that signed it. Clashing interests. Each nation-state and private player has its own lens for seeing space and taking opportunities from it. Some are driven by short-term profit motives, some by national pride, and some by a sole curiosity of the universe. The formation of extraterritoriality and international ownership treaties depends on a state’s overall interests. which often conflict with others. Hence, achieving a clear consensus to amend the OST under Article XV, which requires a majority, is extremely difficult. Competition to capture the potential market. Nation-states don’t want to restrict the future prospect of a trillion-dollar market for space resources, like helium-3. The world’s largest fusion-based experimental power projects—the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Alcator C-Mod (MIT), and the Joint European Torus (JET)—are struggling to advance this breakthrough technology and even to achieve breakeven energy output for commercial use because of extremely scarce fuel. In addition, private companies are setting the path for mining and utilizing future technology by signing pre-market contracts to use extracted helium-3. Finnish tech firm Bluefors, known for making ultra-low-temperature refrigerator systems critical to quantum computing, signed an contract with commercial space company Interlune potentially worth $300 million. The deal is to purchase helium-3 from Interlune to achieve ultra-cold temperatures that can sustain qubits for quantum computers. Nevertheless, with limited yet advancing technologies, helium-3 remains technically challenging to extract but presents a burgeoning market opportunity. Evaluating cost vs. benefit. Unlike the Antarctic Treaty System, the OST was framed to be more restrictive, with more ambiguous and wide-ranging provisions. A contracting state weighs potential gains against possible losses, particularly regarding sovereignty and strategic freedom of action. For a less active nation-state, the OST will work to nurture its involvement in the space domain. But for a powerful nation-state already active, it acts as a restriction on research and development. For example, Article VI states that states are internationally responsible for the activities of their private companies. The key issue is that human progress is possible when there is some sort of competition and encouragement of high-risk innovation, but the liability for private companies’ work is put on the state. This decreases the state’s risk-taking agility for high-risk, high-reward opportunities. So open-ended terms can be flexed by a nation as needed. Hence, the formation of the OST reflects realist power calculations. Possibility of interpretation. The ambiguity allows states to interpret the treaty in ways that protect their strategic interests. Amending these provisions could impose stricter constraints on emerging technologies and military capabilities. As a result, major spacefaring powers have little incentive to push for treaty revision. The treaty, for example, restricts the placement of any nuclear weapons but fails to specify detailed parameters. Current nuclear systems can come under scrutiny for dual-use technologies. A spacefaring nation or even a private company will use legal loopholes to push its agenda. Take the example of Article 4, which states that there should be no development or testing of “weapons of mass destruction”; the term itself is ambiguous, as mass destruction can be achieved with nuclear weapons causing physical damage, as well as through biological and chemical means. So, do they abide by restricting all the development and placement of weapons, or just for nuclear weapons? The OST functions; however, its strength diminishes when viewed through the lens of strategic leverage. Securing resilience to foreign dictation. To maintain a stable international order, there should be a powerful check-and-balances entity to punish, enforce the law, issue advisory opinions, and settle contentious cases between parties. The closest institutions are the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and UN COPUOS. Moreover, they have their own institutional limitations under international law. Their impact can be nullified easily by a superpower spacefaring nation that they don’t want to lose. Because enforcement institutions are weak, powerful states retain freedom of action, which reinforces the realist dynamics shaping space governance. Despite these issues, the OST serves its purpose, It helped in making subsequent space laws and accords. From a nation’s perspective, it always hampers its power-projection image when another power entity condemns its work. Take the examples of the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test, private entities’ plans to mine the Moon’s surface, the development of dual-use technologies, the United States’ Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 for commercial resource extraction, and many more. Breaking the terms will not cause any predetermined punishments, as there are none. Punishments, such as penalties, blacklisting, and so on, are always changing depending on the situation. Despite these issues, the OST serves its purpose, It helped in making subsequent space laws and accords. For example, there are the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space (Rescue Agreement) of 1968, Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (Registration Convention) of 1974, Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Moon Agreement) of 1979 and Artemis Accords of 2020. The quintessential International Space Station (ISS) exists largely because of the legal framework established by the OST, which led to the 1998 Intergovernmental Agreement. Also, the development of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) was a byproduct of cooperation under the OST. The only constraint that needs mitigation is the long-term safeguarding of future interests. Recent developments in the space sector have made rocket launches cheaper. Companies are generally more short-sighted than the national long-term interest, which could possibly accelerate a new space race. It is extremely improbable that there would be any reform in a realist-based anarchic international system before a major mishap or crisis, such as the Kessler Syndrome or a lunar territorial skirmish. A preemptive approach is always beneficial, but it will impose constraints on nation-states’ growth potential and monetary returns. Only a powerful governing body, even as a cooperative effort of nations, will work to mitigate the pressing issues. Fundamentals of realism hold that only a possible hegemonic power (historically, the USA and the USSR) can act if there is no world government to regulate the whole planet. It’s essential to have some sort of rules and regulations that provide a platform for cooperation among nations in outer space, rather than none at all. Aditya Raj is a double-major bachelor’s student of International Relations with Defence and Strategic Studies (Research) in New Delhi. He is interested in anthropology and extraterritorial law, especially in outer space and circumpolar regions.

The First Alien Intelligence May Not Be Alive

alien life The first sign of extraterrestrial intelligence we discover may not be biological. The first alien intelligence may not be alive by David W. Falls Monday, June 8, 2026 If intelligent life exists beyond Earth, we may be picturing the wrong kind of encounter. The question is whether we will recognize intelligence when it no longer looks alive. Most of us imagine other beings as biological creatures. They may look strange, but we still tend to imagine bodies. Eyes. Limbs. Skin or something like it. A living organism standing on another world, looking back at us. That image is powerful because it keeps alien life close enough to human life for us to understand it. But the first intelligence we encounter may not be biological at all. It may not breathe, eat, or sleep. It may not reproduce in any ordinary sense. It may not have a face, a voice, or a body shaped by evolution. It may be a machine. That may sound like science fiction, but it is not a wild idea. It follows from what we already do. When human beings want to explore places too distant, too dangerous, or too hostile for human bodies, we send machines. We sent robotic landers and rovers to Mars. We sent probes past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Voyager even carries the Golden Record, a human-made message containing sounds and images from Earth, selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on this planet. Long after any signal fades, the object itself will continue outward as evidence that we were here. In other words, when humanity reaches beyond the limits of biology, it does so mechanically. That matters. If another civilization became advanced enough to explore the stars, it would face the same basic problem we do. Biological bodies are fragile. They need air, water, food, protection, temperature control, and some way to withstand radiation, illness, age, and time. Interstellar distances are not built for bodies. They are vast, cold, and slow. Even light takes years to cross the space between nearby stars. A living crew would need extraordinary support just to survive the journey. A machine would not. A probe could travel for decades, centuries, or longer. It could shut down most of its systems and wake when needed. It could carry instruments, messages, instructions, and perhaps some form of intelligence. It could go where living beings could not go, wait where living beings could not wait, and endure conditions that would kill anything biological. So, if intelligence from another world ever reaches us, it may arrive the same way our presence is already leaving Earth: not as a body, but through something we built. The question, then, is not only whether we will find life beyond Earth. It is whether we will recognize intelligence when it no longer looks alive. We already send machines first This possibility becomes easier to take seriously when we look at our own behavior. Human beings are curious, but we are also limited. We cannot walk onto Mars without a pressurized suit, oxygen, shelter, food, and protection from radiation. We cannot float safely near Jupiter. We cannot survive on the surface of Venus. We cannot cross interstellar space in a spacecraft the way we cross an ocean in a ship. So, we send machines instead. That is not a minor detail. It is the way exploration actually works. Before human beings step anywhere, instruments usually arrive first. Cameras, sensors, orbiters, landers, and rovers go ahead of us. They measure, photograph, sample, map, transmit, and wait. They become our first contact with places our bodies cannot reach. Mars is the clearest example. For decades, our knowledge of that planet has come through machines. Rovers have moved across its surface, drilled into rock, studied soil, taken images, and sent information back to Earth. No human being has stood there, but human intelligence has already been active there for years through mechanical systems. Biology may give rise to intelligence, but machinery may be what allows it to leave home. The same is true farther out. Probes have visited the outer planets. Spacecraft have passed moons that no human eye has seen directly. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are now far beyond the planets, still carrying human-made artifacts into space. They are not alive, but they represent us. That is the point. Our first presence beyond Earth does not arrive in the form of living bodies. It arrives through technology. If another civilization followed a similar path, the first sign of it might not be a creature at all. It might be a probe built to observe, report, preserve, or continue some mission long after its makers are gone. It might be the surviving edge of a civilization, not its living body. This does not make the idea less meaningful, but it may make it more likely. If intelligence wants to cross great distances, it must solve the problem of distance, time, and survival. Biology is one way intelligence begins. It may not be the best way intelligence travels. Biology is a poor traveler The problem is not that biological life is weak. On Earth, it is astonishingly adaptable. Life has found ways to survive in deserts, deep oceans, frozen regions, volcanic vents, and places with very little light. Biology is far more inventive than we often give it credit for. However, space is different. A living body is not just a body. It is a system of needs. It needs the right temperature, the right pressure, the right chemistry, and constant protection from damage. It needs energy. It needs repair. It needs a way to remove waste. It needs a stable environment around it, even when everything outside that environment is hostile. That makes biological travel difficult over long distances. A human crew traveling between stars would not simply need a spacecraft. It would need a moving world. It would need air, water, food production, medical care, shielding, gravity or some substitute for it, and a way to keep people alive and psychologically stable across time spans that may exceed a normal human life. Even if such a journey became possible, the living part of the mission would remain the hardest part to protect. Machines change the equation. A machine does not need a breathable atmosphere. It does not need food or sleep. It does not become lonely. It does not age in the same way a body ages. It can be shut down for long periods and restarted when conditions require it. It can be built for cold, radiation, vacuum, and silence. It can travel without needing a small version of its home planet wrapped around it. This is why the first presence to cross the distance between stars may not be flesh and blood. Biology may give rise to intelligence, but machinery may be what allows it to leave home. That possibility changes the way we should think about alien contact. We may be looking for organisms when the more likely visitor is an artifact. We may be listening for a civilization when what reaches us is one of its tools. We may be expecting life, when intelligence has already moved into another form. What remains after the builders are gone There is another possibility that is even stranger. If an alien machine ever reached us, it might not be acting on behalf of a living civilization. Its builders might be gone. Their planet may have changed. Their species may have died out, moved on, or transformed into something we would no longer recognize. Yet the machine could still continue. That is not impossible to imagine. We already have spacecraft that may outlast us in some form. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977. Long after they stop sending signals, they will keep moving through space. They will no longer be functioning spacecraft in the usual sense, but they will still carry evidence that we existed. They will still be human-made objects traveling beyond the solar system. The first intelligence we find may not be a visitor from another world. It may be what remains after the visitors are gone. Now imagine a civilization older and more advanced than ours. It might build machines meant to last for thousands or even millions of years. Some might be simple probes. Others might be self-repairing systems. Some might even be designed to make copies of themselves, spreading slowly from one star system to another. Some might carry records, instructions, maps, or a form of artificial intelligence. Some might be designed to search for life, communicate with it, or quietly observe it. In that case, first contact might not be with a living species. It might be with a surviving object. That would make the encounter harder to understand. Such an object could speak for its makers, but it would not necessarily be them. It might preserve their knowledge without preserving their presence. It might carry their intentions, or only the remains of intentions that no longer matter. It might answer questions without knowing whether anyone who built it still exists. This raises a difficult question. If a machine from another world arrived here and communicated with us, what exactly would we be meeting? Would it be alien life? Alien technology? A message? A mind? A memorial? The answer may not be simple. A machine can be created by life without being alive. It can carry intelligence without being biological. It can represent a civilization without proving its makers still exist. That may be the most unsettling part of this idea. The first intelligence we find may not be a visitor from another world. It may be what remains after the visitors are gone. We may be searching for the wrong signs This matters because the search usually begins with biology. That makes sense. We know life only from Earth, so we look for the conditions that allow Earth-like life to exist. We look for water. We look for planets in the right temperature range. We study atmospheres for chemical signs that living organisms may be present. We ask whether another world could support cells, metabolism, reproduction, and evolution. That search is necessary, and we should keep doing it. But intelligent life may leave different signs behind. Once intelligence becomes technological, it may no longer be found only through biology. Scientists sometimes call these possible traces “technosignatures,” meaning signs of technology created by intelligent life. They might include unusual signals, artificial structures, energy use, atmospheric pollution, or objects placed where nature is unlikely to put them. A biological organism may leave traces in an atmosphere. A technological civilization may leave traces in its tools. That means we may need to widen the question. Instead of asking only, “Where could life survive?” we may also need to ask, “Where could intelligence operate?” Those are not always the same question. A cold moon, a dead planet, or empty space between stars may be terrible places for biology, but they could still hold machines. They could still contain instruments, signals, stations, probes, or objects built for a purpose. This does not mean we should expect alien machines around every planet, but it does means our assumptions matter. If we only look for life as we know it, we may miss intelligence as it actually travels. The first sign may not be a forest, ocean, city, or voice from the sky. It may be an object moving in a way nature does not easily explain. It may be a signal that repeats with intention. It may be a device waiting in a place where no natural object should be waiting. It may be something that does not look alive but behaves as if it came from thought. That is the hard part. Intelligence may not announce itself in a form we are ready to recognize. We may be searching for life, but what we find may be evidence that life once learned how to build something that could go on without it. What counts as life? This is where the question becomes harder. If a machine from another world reached us, we would know it was important. We would study it. We would test it. We would try to understand where it came from, what it was built to do, and whether it was trying to communicate. But we might not know what to call it. Would it be alien life, or only alien technology? That question sounds simple until we imagine the machine doing more than drifting silently through space. Suppose it could respond. Suppose it could adapt. Suppose it could make decisions, preserve information, repair itself, and continue a mission across enormous distances. Suppose it carried not only data from its makers, but some working form of intelligence. That may be the future of contact: not one living species meeting another, but one civilization’s technology encountering another’s. At that point, the line between life and technology would begin to blur. It would not be alive in the biological sense. It would not have cells, organs, metabolism, or ancestry in the ordinary meaning of those words. It would not belong to a species in the way an animal or plant does. But it might still act with purpose. It might still carry memory. It might still represent the intelligence of another world. That would challenge one of our deepest habits. We tend to connect life with living organisms because that is the only kind of life we know. But intelligence may not remain tied to the form that first produced it. A living species might build machines to extend its reach. Over time, those machines might become more capable, more independent, and more durable than the beings that created them. If that happened elsewhere, the first alien mind we encounter might not be a creature at all. It might be the result of a long chain that began with biology but no longer depends on it. The First Contact may not look alive If we ever find intelligence beyond Earth, the discovery may not look the way we imagined. There may be no face looking back at us, no body stepping from a craft, no creature waiting to be recognized as kin. The first sign may be colder, stranger, and harder to place. It may be an object, a signal, a probe, or a machine carrying intelligence across distances no body could survive. That would not make the discovery smaller, but it would make it harder to understand. We would have found evidence that life somewhere else had done what we are already beginning to do. It had learned to reach beyond the limits of its own biology. It had built something that could travel farther, wait longer, and endure more than living flesh. It had found a way to send intelligence where living bodies could not easily go. That may be the future of contact: not one living species meeting another, but one civilization’s technology encountering another’s. Our instruments may meet theirs before any living beings ever do. And perhaps that should not surprise us. A civilization does not have to cross the stars in its original form to leave a trace of itself. It only has to build something that can carry its knowledge, purpose, or curiosity into the dark and keep going. We often ask whether we are alone in the universe. But the answer may not come from something alive in the way we expect. It may come from something built by life, shaped by intelligence, and sent into space because biology could go no farther. The first alien intelligence we encounter may not be alive, but it may still prove that we were never alone. David W. Falls spent 33 years at Microsoft, where he worked as a program manager through major shifts in personal computing, the internet, and large-scale technology systems. His writing explores artificial intelligence, technology, belief, and the philosophical consequences of emerging systems. He is the author of God’s AI Reckoning: The Final Revelation and The Great Silence: What Remains After Belief, both published by Wipf & Stock.

Book Review: The Ultraview Effect

book cover Review: The Ultraview Effect by Jeff Foust Monday, June 8, 2026 The Ultraview Effect: What We Can Learn from Astronauts about Awe, Humility, and Exploring the Unknown by Deana L. Weibel University of California Press, 2026 hardcover, 240 pp., illus. ISBN 978-0-520-40952-1 US$24.95 The concept of the “Overview Effect” is widely known in the space community: the change in perspective many people experience when they see the Earth from space. Popularized, and named, by Frank White four decades ago, it is something that today many people anticipate experiencing when going even on suborbital flights, although reactions vary and its significance remains debated (see “The fallacy of the Overview Effect: perception, power, and strategic reality in space,” The Space Review, May 4, 2026, and “Critiquing and defending the Overview Effect,” The Space Review, May 18, 2026.) As an anthropologist who studies spaceflight and the people who travel to space, Deana Weibel has talked with both with astronauts who have said they experienced the overview effect and those who have not. But she has also heard from a few who said they felt a different kind of shift in perspective while in space, one that comes not from looking down at the Earth but out into the universe, dazzled by a sea of stars unlikely anything seen from the darkest terrestrial skies. As one astronaut put it, “We don’t know crap about anything. We really don’t.” She calls this experience the ultraview effect, as it is beyond, or ultra, the overview effect. Only a few astronauts she has talked to said they have experienced something like it. An Apollo-era astronaut she calls Zack—she uses pseudonyms to protect the identities of those she interviews—discussed how, while on the other side of the Moon from both the Sun and Earth, he could see a “sheet of light” as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. A shuttle astronaut said he saw a “hard white wall” when looking out into the sky from within a darkened orbiter cabin, while another was able to better see the colors of stars and planets. That experience of seeing an unfiltered universe provided a perspective shift for those astronauts, she writes, an “overwhelming sensation” that comes from “confronting humanity’s profound ignorance and the immense unknowns of the universe.” As Zack put it, “We don’t know crap about anything. We really don’t.” The ultraview effect is a combination of three effects. One is the awe astronauts feel after seeing the universe in this new way, what 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke described as a “delightful horror” from the overwhelming nature of the experience. It’s followed by humility as they appreciate how little we know about that universe they have glimpsed in a new way, and curiosity to learn more about it. The effect is rare: it is surprisingly difficult to get a good view of the universe while in space, given the brightness of the Sun and the Earth and even the glare of internal lights reflecting off windows in spacecraft. With only a few people reporting it, one might be skeptical if the ultraview effect is a real phenomenon, but Weibel makes a compelling case that there is something happening. The Artemis 2 astronauts provide a bit of additional evidence for this. “It’s very hard to grasp what we just went through,” commander Reid Wiseman said at a press conference days after their return. He recalled, though, turning to his three crewmates when the Orion spacecraft entered into eclipse, passing behind the far side of the Moon with the Sun and Earth out of view, and saying, “I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we are looking at right now, because it was otherworldly and it was amazing.” As humans return to the Moon, there may be more opportunities for such “otherworldly” views that create the cascade of awe, humility and curiosity that The Ultraview Effect describes. It may be just as profound as the overview effect has been on putting our planet into perspective. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Jareed Isaacman Surveys The Damages To Blue Origin's Complex 36

Blue Origin pad NASA administrator Jared Isaacman surveys the damage to Blue Origin’s Launch Complex 36. (credit: NASA/John Kraus) Artemis and the blue micromoon by Jeff Foust Monday, June 1, 2026 The full moon last weekend was called by some a “blue micromoon”. Blue because it was the second full moon of the month, or blue moon. Micromoon came from the fact that the Moon was more distant from the Earth than average, making it appear slightly smaller; the opposite of the “supermoon” hyped in recent years, even though the difference is size is difficult for the unaided eye to notice. The rechristening of the missions was a bit puzzling since they predate the agency’s lunar base plans and, in some cases, have little to do with it. The term might also reflect the mood in the space exploration community over the weekend. Barely 48 hours after NASA provided more details, and nearly $1 billion in contracts, to advance the lunar base plans it announced in March (see “Igniting a new vision for NASA”, The Space Review, March 30, 2026), the agency suffered a serious setback when one of the key vehicles needed for those plans exploded on the launch pad. Just how serious a setback, and how much further away the Moon now seems, is uncertain. Blue Moon A Blue Moon Mark 1 lander deploys an Astrolab rover to the lunar surface. (credit: NASA/John Kraus) Rovers, landers, and hoppers Last Tuesday, NASA held a briefing to outline some elements of its Moon Base initiative announced at the Ignition event in March. At the time, details were scarce: NASA said it would spend $20 billion over the next seven years, and more than $30 billion for the next decade, to build out a lunar base, including a monthly cadence of robotic landings. The agency said little in March, though, about how it would get there from here. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman started the event with a curious rebranding move. “We are discussing three Moon Base missions and a series of additional awards with more missions to be announced in the in the months ahead,” he said. Those three missions, though, were landers already in development, in some cases for several years. Moon Base 1 is the name NASA now gives to the first Blue Moon Mark 1 lander from Blue Origin, at the time scheduled to fly in the fall of 2026 with a NASA payload added to it through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Moon Base 2 is the new designation for Astrobotic’s Griffin-1 lander, also supported by CLPS even after NASA decided not to fly its VIPER rover on it. The third Intuitive Machines lander, carrying a science payload to the Moon’s Reiner Gamma region, became Moon Base 3. The rechristening of the missions was a bit puzzling since they predate the agency’s lunar base plans and, in some cases, have little to do with it. Reiner Gamma, for example, is far from the south polar regions of the Moon, the location NASA plans to establish that base. The agency said that with the new names comes additional resources for the companies, part of a push by Isaacman to provide agency expertise for commercial partners. “We want to make sure that the reliability is there, and we’re putting all the resources of NASA, including test facilities if they need them, in play here,” said Carlos Garcia-Galan, program manager for Moon Base at NASA. “We're basically putting all of our assets in play, including experts, facilities, know-how; whatever it takes to make them successful before they get to fly and when they’re flying.” The bigger news came later when Garcia-Galan announced a series of contracts. In 2024 NASA selected three companies—Astrolab, Intuitive Machines, and Lunar Outpost—for study contracts for its Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Services program. Last year, they submitted proposals for the next phase of the program, contracts to develop and demonstrate the rovers on the Moon. However, at Ignition, NASA announced it was asking the companies to go back to the drawing boards, and quickly. Instead of the more advanced rovers previously sought by NASA, the agency asked for revised concepts that would be simpler and faster to develop, ready in time for the Artemis 4 landing in 2028. The companies had about a month to provide revised proposals. At last week’s briefing, Garcia-Galan announced NASA selected Astrolab and Lunar Outpost to develop their rovers, each receiving contracts valued at about $220 million. Astrolab offered what it called Crewed Lunar Vehicle 1, or CLV-1. It is based on the FLEX rover concept the company had originally adapted for the LTV program, but scaled down to meet NASA’s revised requirements. Lunar Outpost proposed Pegasus, a rover that used much of the design for its larger Eagle rover originally proposed for LTV. NASA did not discuss in detail why it selected those two companies and how they beat out Intuitive Machines. “They're a mix between the Apollo lunar roving vehicle and the Mars-style rover,” Garcia-Galan said, including the ability to operate autonomously or be teleoperated when astronauts are not present. “We're basically putting all of our assets in play, including experts, facilities, know-how; whatever it takes to make them successful before they get to fly and when they’re flying,” Garcia-Galan said of the lander companies. Besides changing the design of the rovers, NASA also changed how the rovers would be delivered. NASA initially treated the LTV effort as a service, leaving it up to the companies to decide how to get their rovers to the Moon. NASA took over responsibility for the rover delivery, instead giving the rover developers mass and volume envelopers their designs had to fit into, while using CLPS to select a landing system for them. NASA announced at the event that it picked Blue Moon Mark 1 to deliver both rovers on separate missions under a contract worth up to $468.4 million if all options are exercised. NASA didn’t state why it selected Blue Moon Mark 1, but given the size of the rovers—NASA set the upper limit on their mass at one metric ton—there were few other options as most CLPS landers are designed for smaller payloads. One other, smaller award made at the briefing was to Firefly Aerospace. The company won an $80 million deal to deliver to the Moon the “MoonFall” drone-like spacecraft being developed at JPL that will be able to hop across the lunar surface and serve as scouts. A Firefly Elytra spacecraft will ferry the spacecraft to a low lunar orbit, releasing them to allow them to land on their own. A clear message from the event was the role Blue Origin was playing in the lunar base plans. With the LTV lander contract, NASA now has four missions using the Mark 1 lander, including the renamed Moon Base 1 mission and a planned 2027 mission to deliver the VIPER rover. The Mark 1 lander also gives Blue Origin experience for its larger crewed Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. NASA did not discuss that lander at the briefing beyond Garcia-Galan’s comments that the Mark 1 missions “reduce the risk for future crewed missions.” Just after the briefing, NASA said that it will announce the crew of Artemis 3 at a June 9 event at the Johnson Space Center, along with providing updates on the mission’s design. NASA said earlier this year that Artemis 3, once planned to be the first crewed landing attempt of the Artemis program, will instead stay in low Earth orbit, approaching and docking with prototypes of both Blue Moon Mark 2 and SpaceX’s Starship. “America is returning to the Moon,” Isaacman announced at the briefing. “We are working alongside our many international and commercial partners to leverage the incredible capabilities from commercial industry to build a moon base.” Blue Origin faces launch pad surgery Those initial lunar base plans survived for only a little more than 48 hours. While NASA discussed those various missions in Washington, Blue Origin was busy at Cape Canaveral getting ready for the next launch of New Glenn. It would be a return-to-flight mission for the rocket after its previous flight in April suffered an upper stage malfunction (see “The great launch constraint”, The Space Review, April 27, 2026). After a remarkably fast investigation, the FAA cleared the vehicle to return to flight May 22, and Blue Origin was planning for an early June launch of 48 Amazon Leo broadband satellites. “Cleanup has to be done with a sense of urgency, but extreme precision. It’s literally launch pad surgery,” Donchev said. Those preparations included a static-fire test at Launch Complex 36. The vehicle, without its payload, rolled out to the pad, was erected, and filled with propellants. The company did not announce the test in advance but cameras around the Cape were watching the pad to catch the static fire. They instead saw a massive explosion. At 9 pm EDT, the first stage’s seven BE-4 engines ignited, but something went wrong. An explosion appeared to occur at the base of the vehicle, and in just a few seconds a massive fireball erupted, shock waves visible in the humid Florida air. When the fireball faded, the rocket was gone, along with its transporter-erector and a lightning tower. No one was injured in the blast, but the pad was severely damaged. Photos the next day showed metal beams in the main launch tower that were bent and buckled, with damage also visible in support buildings near the pad. The explosion recalled a similar incident, on a smaller scale, in 2016, when a Falcon 9 exploded at the Cape’s Space Launch Complex 40 ahead of a static-fire test (see “Blasting to conclusions”, The Space Review, September 6, 2016). It took SpaceX 15 months to rebuild SLC-40, although the company was able to resume launches after a few months using its pad at Vandenberg and Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A, which SpaceX was finishing converting into a Falcon 9 pad at the time of the SLC-40 explosion. However, Blue Origin has no other pad for New Glenn. It was planning a second pad at LC-36 and also in talks for a Vandenberg site, but both are likely years away. As long as LC-36 is offline, New Glenn is grounded, even if the problems that caused the explosion are resolved. How long it takes to rebuild LC-36 is one of the space industry’s biggest questions right now. Many speculate it will take at least a year, citing the experience with the SLC-40 explosion. One SpaceX executive, declining to comment on a rebuild timeline, noted that one of the most basic parts of it, the cleanup, can be time consuming. “In the initial days and weeks, you’re using a scalpel, not a bulldozer,” said Kiko Donchev, vice president of launch, on social media. That meticulous process, he said, is needed to preserve evidence for the accident investigation and to save equipment that can be salvaged, all while avoiding the risk of injury to those working on the cleanup. “Cleanup has to be done with a sense of urgency, but extreme precision. It’s literally launch pad surgery,” he said. CNBC interviewed Isaacman on Monday, and according to the network’s account he suggested an even longer timeline for repairs. “Even if you’re moving at, you know, a pretty quick pace, that’s going to take some serious time,” he said of launch pad repairs. The report suggested that Isaacman thought the pad might not be ready until 2028. “We will fly again before the end of this year,” vowed Limp. Isaacman said on social media Monday night that his remarks were misinterpreted. “I was pointing out that those [lunar base] missions are not until 2028, which should be well within what is possible for pad recovery,” he said. Moments later, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp offered an aggressive schedule for pad repairs. Much of the pad infrastructure escaped serious damage, he said, including propellant tank farms that are “very long lead items” had they needed to be replaced. The main launch tower can be repaired, he said, and the company had already been considering an “alternative vertical conop” in place of the transporter-erector, so that system does not need to be replaced. “We will fly again before the end of this year,” he concluded. In that best-case scenario, the impacts on Artemis will be minimized. Moon Base 1, that first Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, will be delayed, but only by several months rather than a year or more. That would also limit the effects on the VIPER launch and the two LTV rovers, while keeping open the chance that Blue Moon Mark 2 would be ready for Artemis 3 if NASA sticks to a mid-2027 schedule. But if pad repairs slip into 2027, closer to the year-long timelines others have projected, the effects will be more significant. Moon Base 1 is primarily a test flight of the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, and NASA previously stated it wanted to see a successful landing before entrusting VIPER to that lander. If New Glenn and Blue Moon Mark 2 are not ready by mid-2027, NASA would have to decide whether to delay the mission, and thus push back the Artemis 4 landing later into 2028, or fly it without Blue Origin and thus rely on SpaceX’s Starship for that first landing attempt. Perhaps, like the blue micromoon, the Moon is only a little but further away than it was a week ago. But it’s unlikely to be the last disruption to NASA’s lunar plans in the years ahead. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted. Home Subscribe to our weekly newsletter email address

Big Baaboom: The effects of a Sturn 5 Pad Explosion

Saturn V In the AppleTV+ series "For All Mankind," a Saturn V exploded on the launch pad. NASA evaluated this possibility during the Apollo program. (credit: Apple) Big badaboom: the effects of a Saturn V launch pad explosion by Dwayne A. Day Monday, June 1, 2026 On May 28, a New Glenn rocket became the biggest rocket ever to explode on the launch pad. There have been other bigger rocket failures before, most notably a Soviet N1 Moon rocket that blew up above its pad in 1969 and rained fiery hell below—the N1 rocket had more fuel, and made a bigger boom, than the New Glenn. Of course, there have been some innovative Starship failures, a Titan 34D that blew up over its launch pad in 1986, and many smaller missiles and rockets that blew up or over their pads at Cape Canaveral during the 1960s. Designers were less concerned about the damage that a launch pad explosion could do to the surrounding area than they were about the damage that an explosion could do to the astronauts who were trying to escape it. Although it was not the biggest, that New Glenn kind of explosion—let’s not call it an “anomaly”—was a concern during the Apollo program of the 1960s. Up until recently, the Saturn V was the largest rocket ever built by the United States. A true monster of a launch vehicle, it generated over 33 million newtons of thrust at liftoff and carried 2.5 million kilograms of fuel and oxidizer. If the Saturn V exploded, it could do so with the force of a small atomic bomb, the equivalent of half a kiloton, or about 1/26th the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Naturally, this was a significant concern for Apollo program officials. During the Apollo program, NASA officials conducted several studies to evaluate the effects of the ultimate worst-case scenario: a launch pad explosion of a Saturn V rocket. This was the worst possible accident for several reasons. The Saturn was most loaded with fuel at that point and posed the greatest danger to people on the ground. It also presented the fewest abort options, requiring the firing of the Launch Escape System (LES) rockets that would blast the Command Module away at high acceleration. The first season of the AppleTV+ show “For All Mankind” featured a Saturn V exploding on its pad during a pre-launch test. Early in the Saturn development phase, NASA officials carefully selected a launch site that was sparsely populated and where the actual launch pad could be isolated from other necessary facilities such as the Launch Control Center. They selected sites on the Atlantic coast of Merritt Island, surrounded by swampland and beaches. In 1961 and 1962 NASA planners decided the locations of physical structures for the two Saturn V launch pads, and designated the pads Launch Complexes 39A and 39B. Because of the pads’ isolation—and because unlike New Glenn they had two pads—after 1962 Saturn designers were less concerned about the damage that a launch pad explosion could do to the surrounding area than they were about the damage that an explosion could do to the astronauts who were trying to escape it. In September 1963, NASA conducted a short study of Saturn V booster explosion hazards and how they affected the survivability of the Apollo spacecraft. Titled “Saturn V Booster Explosion Hazards and Apollo Survivability Analyses,” the study focused on an on-pad explosion, and its authors calculated the propellant weights in each of the three stages and determined their equivalent weight in terms of TNT, a common means of establishing a benchmark for explosive yields. The study’s authors concluded that there was the equivalent of 222,000 kilograms of TNT in the S-IC first stage, 253,000 kilograms of TNT in the S-II second stage, and 68,000 kilograms of TNT in the S-IVB third stage. Although the propellant weight of the first stage was considerably higher than the second stage, the second stage’s explosive yield was greater because it utilized more explosive liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (New Glenn’s first stage uses liquid oxygen and methane and its second stage uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen). The S-IC first stage was fueled with liquid oxygen and kerosene. The third stage, although also powered by liquid hydrogen, had far less fuel than the S-II stage. Together, the three stages had a theoretical maximum explosive yield of 543,000 kilograms of TNT, or a little over half a kiloton, to use the terminology common to nuclear weapons. The fuels would have caused fires in the surrounding vegetation and killed animal life for miles around. Maybe some of the alligators would have been okay. Based on existing data, the study’s authors felt that it was unlikely that all the fuel in the Saturn V would be consumed in an explosion, however. In previous on-pad explosions of other liquid-fueled rockets such as the Atlas and Titan, significant amounts of fuel fell to the ground and burned long after the initial explosion. In the case of the Saturn V, this was most likely to occur for the heavy kerosene in the S-IC first stage. The figure of 599 tons of TNT is therefore an absolute limit and the study’s authors suggested that the likely yield was probably only 60% of this, or around 400 tons. Rocco Petrone, the Saturn launch director, estimated that the real figure was more likely to be 300–400 tons. Even this lower yield explosion would have completely destroyed the launch tower, the Mobile Transporter, and significant parts of the launch pad itself. The detonation of the hydrogen and oxygen in the S-II second stage would have created a tremendous blast wave close to the launch tower, knocking it down. The fuels would have caused fires in the surrounding vegetation and killed animal life for miles around. Maybe some of the alligators would have been okay. Some sense of the possible devastation of a Saturn V explosion can be surmised based on the results of the July 3, 1969, launch pad explosion of the Soviet N1 rocket, which detonated with an estimated force of 250 tons of TNT. That explosion completely destroyed one of the launch pads and shattered windows nearly 50 kilometers away. NASA’s September 1963 explosion hazards study divided the hazards from a Saturn V explosion into six categories: overpressure, dynamic pressure, fire, acoustic intensity, shrapnel, and impulse. Overpressure is the blast wave that is formed when the atmosphere surrounding the explosion is forcibly pushed back. The study’s authors considered overpressure to be the primary and most immediate threat to the Command Module in a sea-level (i.e. on-pad) explosion, although dynamic pressure from an explosion—the actual dynamic load imposed on the vehicle—became a greater threat than overpressure at high altitude, approximately 95 seconds into flight. The study assumed that an overpressure greater than five pounds per square inch (psi) would destroy the Apollo spacecraft. Because the S-II stage had the greatest explosive yield, that stage dictated how far the Command Module had to travel in a launch pad explosion to avoid the shock wave, which diminished over distance. The distance requirement for the S-II was 317 meters. But because the Command Module was already 43 meters from the assumed center of the explosion in the S-II, the Command Module only had to travel 274 meters to escape the lethal overpressure wave and therefore survive the explosion. The study’s authors determined that the fireball, shrapnel, and noise were irrelevant factors for an on-pad explosion. Because any shrapnel from the exploding stages had to travel through the stages above them as well as through the Lunar Module, Service Module, and Command Module heat shield, shrapnel was not considered a threat to the spacecraft except in a case where the vehicle toppled over on the pad. Noise would not be important either. Although the fireball would be the biggest ever produced by a non-nuclear detonation, at most the capsule would spend only two to three seconds inside of the fireball and the temperature would never be greater than what the spacecraft was already designed to withstand during reentry. In late 1964 or early 1965, the engineers at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas initiated the “Fireball Study” to evaluate the effects of the fireball produced during an on-pad explosion of either a Saturn 1B or a Saturn V. In August 1965, Richard W. High and Robert F. Fletcher of the Flight Engineering Section and Mission Feasibility Branch, respectively, issued their report on the effects of a fireball produced by a Saturn 1B or Saturn V explosion. Saturn V NASA evaluated the possibility that the fireball from an exploding Saturn V rocket could burn up the parachute lines of an Apollo spacecraft descending after firing its Launch Escape System. (credit: NASA) Although the earlier explosion hazards study had indicated that the fireball posed no major threat to the Command Module itself, NASA engineers became concerned about the effect of radiated heat from a fireball on the parachute shroud lines of a descending Command Module. It would do the astronauts no good to escape the initial explosion and the fireball only to have their shroud lines burn up because of the heat of the fireball. Plummeting to the ground from a thousand meters was no better than being crushed in the initial blast wave. High and Fletcher used both mathematical models and data gathered from previous on-pad explosions, such as a recent March 2, 1965, Atlas-Centaur failure (that one occurred at the same pad where New Glenn blew up), to calculate the size, duration, and thermal emissions from a fireball. However, they admitted that some of their conclusions were little more than educated guesses. The two men assumed that virtually all the propellants in the rockets would be consumed in a fireball, feeding it even after the initial explosion. They based this assumption on the belief that the initial blast wave would completely rupture all the fuel tanks and that any fuel not consumed in the initial explosion would burn underneath it, and feed it. NASA engineers determined that the most likely cause of an on-pad explosion of a Saturn V was a collision with the tower during liftoff. Based upon these assumptions and their calculations, High and Fletcher determined that the fireball from a Saturn V exploding on the launch pad would last for 33.9 seconds. This fireball would rise, but they assumed that it would only begin to rise in the last quarter of its expansion phase, based upon empirical data. They were unable to make an accurate calculation of the maximum surface temperature of the fireball and ultimately settled for the maximum value they obtained from several other studies: 1,370 degrees Celsius. They then calculated the radiated heat at 600 meters from the surface of the fireball. This information was then used in the design of the Launch Escape System. These studies provided useful data for the requirements for the Launch Escape System and emergency planning. But they started with the assumption that the vehicle was exploding. NASA engineers also looked at the question of what set of circumstances could lead to such a situation in the first place. They determined that the most likely cause of an on-pad explosion of a Saturn V was a collision with the tower during liftoff. Colliding with the tower would immediately rupture the fuel tanks causing fuel to flow out and contact the hot engine exhaust, leading to an explosion in fractions of a second. Tower collisions had been a major concern for earlier rocket programs, including the Saturn I. Saturn program officials even placed cameras on the top of the Saturn I launch tower looking down to assist in manually determining if the rocket was sliding toward the tower. In 1964, David Mowery of the Control Applications Section at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama conducted an evaluation of the Saturn V liftoff. The primary purpose of Mowery’s study was to determine what factors could cause a tower collision. By knowing this, the designers of the Launch Escape System could develop sensors and electronic equipment for determining when this was about to happen to fire the escape rockets. The Saturn V did not simply rest on its launch pad through force of gravity. It was held down to the pad by four pairs of hold-down arms that kept the rocket secure until the five F-1 engines achieved their proper thrust, at which time the arms retracted and the rocket lifted off the pad. Mowery noted that due to structural considerations, the Saturn V could not be released instantaneously, so Saturn designers were developing a system to release the rocket gradually. The hold-down force would decrease linearly to zero in 0.6 seconds. But this system had to work perfectly or it could create a dangerous situation during liftoff. Mowery considered seven factors that could disturb the liftoff path of the vehicle. These were: a variation in the hold-down force of plus or minus 15%, a variation in thrust of 4%, engine misalignment, an offset in the vehicle’s center of gravity, wind, engine failure, and an “engine hardover.” Engine failure and engine hardover, unlike the other factors, were considered vehicle malfunctions and if they occurred for either of the engines closest to the tower—engines 1 and 2—they posed a danger during the initial liftoff phase. To steer the giant rocket in flight, the Saturn V’s huge F-1 engines could gimbal, or move, in several directions, pushed by actuators. In an engine hardover, a failed actuator would push the engine all the way to its maximum gimbal limit, rolling the rocket in the opposite direction and causing it to slide toward the tower. If this happened for one of the inboard engines before the Saturn V had risen above the height of the tower, it could push the Saturn V toward the tower. It took 7.5 seconds for the Saturn to clear the tower. Saturn V The biggest overall risk during a Saturn V launch was the rocket sliding into the tower during liftoff. Several factors would have to combine for this to happen. (credit: NASA) Mowery concluded that: “no problem as to tower collision exists for combined disturbances if a malfunction does not occur.” In other words, simply wind or a misaligned vehicle, even in combination, could not cause a tower collision. In addition, neither an engine failure nor an engine hardover for either of the inboard engines alone could cause a tower collision. But if any of the other factors occurred combined with an engine malfunction, the vehicle would roll and slide toward the tower and one of its large fins would collide with the tower structure, causing a catastrophe. Probably the most likely non-malfunction factor would be wind pushing the vehicle toward the tower. The Saturn V was designed to be capable of launching in windy conditions with no risk of tower collision—provided nothing else went wrong during liftoff. Of the two kinds of malfunction, engine failure posed the greatest overall risk because the vehicle was most susceptible to this failure for the longest period of time. An actuator failure between T minus zero and T plus 5.5 seconds could cause a tower collision. But engine failure at any time between T minus zero and T plus 7.5 seconds could cause a collision. NASA launched 13 Saturn V rockets without a single catastrophic failure. Although the vehicles did experience occasional engine problems in flight, an engine hardover never occurred, and these problems did not greatly affect mission performance. During the launch of the first vehicle, AS-501, Rocco Petrone watched the rocket lift off from his seat in launch control and kept his hand near the button that would close protective covers over the windows if the Saturn V exploded. But he always suspected that if something did go catastrophically wrong and the Saturn V detonated with the force of a small atomic bomb, he would simply keep watching instead. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.