MSpace Force says America needs a THIRD major rocket launch range by 2030. Not a new launch pad. A whole new range.
CThat's how much demand has exploded. The military can't even keep up with launch traffic.
MThis is the Space Systems Command chief, Lieutenant General Philip Garrant. He says they've already formed a planning team to find a spot.
CAnd everyone on X is already fighting about where it should go, because of course they are.
MOne guy says Brownsville, right next to Starbase. Another says SpaceX is planning ten pads in Louisiana. But the point is, this is bigger than any one company.
CThe military has Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg in California. Both are packed. SpaceX alone launches more than anyone dreamed of ten years ago.
MEighty-one Starlink launches this year. And that's just one program. Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Firefly — everybody wants to fly.
CHere's what I actually find interesting. The Space Force is thinking about a public-private partnership for the new range. Not just building it on a federal base.
MWhich makes sense. The commercial demand is driving this. Why not let industry help pay for the range they'll use?
CBecause the Space Force also needs to launch classified payloads. You can't have that on a range where a tourist with a drone can fly over.
MThat's exactly why they need a third range — they can keep military launches separate from the commercial circus. Which is... the whole point of having Space Systems Command, I'd say.
CThe planning team exists. The deadline is 2030. So get ready for every state in the union to suddenly claim they're the next Cape Canaveral.
MSpeaking of Moon shots... NASA just laid out new timelines for SpaceX and Blue Origin to get astronauts back on the Moon. First landing since 1972.
CThis is the real news of the day. Ars Technica reports that NASA says it finally solved the Orion heat shield problem that's been dragging everything for years.
MThe part that kept cracking on re-entry? They say they've got a fix. And now both lander teams have updated schedules.
CBut a lot of the specific dates floating around X are pure speculation, so let's be careful. One account says Blue Origin's uncrewed Blue Moon lands on the Moon in Q1 of next year.
MBlue Origin hasn't confirmed that. The only thing we know from NASA is that they're still racing to qualify the landers. No specific quarter.
COkay, but can we talk about the actual problem? We've had two landers in development for years. Artemis keeps slipping. And now we're supposed to believe it's solved?
MI think we should believe the part where NASA says they have a heat shield fix. That was the long pole. Everything else was waiting on that.
CYou don't think there's a little bit of theater here? Some people think the administration wants a Moon landing before the next election. NASA needs to show progress.
MCome on. They're not going to fake a heat shield test. These are engineers. They test, they fail, they fix. That's how this works.
CNo, but they can move the goalposts on what counts as a landing. We've seen it with the Orion issue. Critics say they slow-walked that for a decade.
MAnd now they say it's fixed. I'll take a little skepticism, but you can't just wave away an actual technical milestone because the timeline feels rushed.
CFine. I'll wait for the uncrewed test. If Blue Moon Mark 1 actually lands next year, I'll be the first one cheering. Until then, it's a plan, not a mission.
MFair. And by the way, one of those accounts used a ticker for SpaceX like it's on the stock market. It's not. SpaceX is still private.
CRight, no matter how much the space fanboys want to trade it.
MDifferent corner of space news: one Starship launch in late September reportedly put forty tons of Starlink satellites into orbit in a single flight.
CForty tons. If that holds up, that's the entire mass that Rocket Lab, Firefly, Blue Origin, Stoke and Relativity have launched all year combined.
MWell... we couldn't actually verify that number. One analyst posted it on X, but the math checks out directionally. Starship just operates on a different scale.
CThat is genuinely hard for competitors to answer. Electron launches about two tons total per year. Starship does that in one morning.
MBut volume isn't everything. The smaller players have their own lanes — dedicated smallsat launches, responsive military launches. It's not a zero-sum game.
CNo, but it's a wake-up call. When the heavy hauler is also the cheap hauler, you can't hide in a niche forever.
MAnd while we're on government tech policy — the Pentagon says prediction market bets could put troops in danger.
CHegseth sent out a memo warning that insider bets on military operations might give enemies useful intel. Ars has the story.
MThink about it. If someone at the Pentagon knows a carrier group is moving and starts buying contracts on a prediction market, the price moves. That's a signal.
CBut that's true of insider trading on Wall Street, too. We don't ban soldiers from owning defense stocks. We just prosecute when they trade on secrets.
MYes, but prediction markets are cheaper, faster, and anonymous. You can make a bet from a burner phone. You don't need a brokerage account.
CSo the answer is a blanket ban? Because that just pushes it underground. If someone has a secret and a Venmo account, they can find a bookie.
MThe point isn't to stop spies. It's to stop the signal from being public. A sudden move on a prediction market is a broadcast to the world.
CI... actually see that. The market itself becomes the leak. But you'd have to ban all military-adjacent markets, and that's a big hammer.
MThat's the tension. Prediction markets can be great for politics or sports. But when the contract is 'will the Navy move the Seventh Fleet'... yeah, that's a risk.
CThe memo exists. We'll see if anything beyond a warning happens.
MAnd here's one that'll start a fight: Google's new privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertising. But only if you turn on a feature called Personal Intelligence.
CWait — they're openly admitting it now? Gmail has always been the 'we don't read your email for ads' service.
MThey stopped scanning Gmail for ads in 2017. This is new. And it's opt-in, but still — the policy language says turning on Personal Intelligence gives Google more data for ad targeting.
CWhat exactly is Personal Intelligence? It sounds like one of those things Google pre-checks in a settings menu three pages deep.
MIt's a feature that mines your data to give you smarter recommendations. Your email, your calendar, your search history, all folded in.
CRight. And for that, you pay with every shred of privacy you thought you had.
MGoogle is a free service. We are the product. It's been true since day one. What's new is the transparency, which is... actually what privacy laws require.
COh, great. They're transparent about how they monetize my grandma's birthday letters to me. That makes it all okay.
MNobody's forcing you to use Gmail. Turn off Personal Intelligence, delete your account, go to ProtonMail. But the deal's been the same for twenty years.
CThat's the thing, though. A lot of people don't know the deal changed. And that's what bugs me.
MAnd on that cheerful privacy note...
COh, and if you want to see a real fight, next hour we're talking about AI agents going off-script in a real-world test. That one got weird.