Like many other space professionals and enthusiasts, I remain concerned about the decades-long tug-of-war between the “Moon” and “Mars” camps. The binary narrative we use—and the underlying story our nation tells itself—is flawed.🌕🔴 A 🧵 That flaw makes it far too easy for each new president and Congress to shift direction. Without a strong, coherent story, all our plans become fragile. New leaders often believe they’re correcting the "mistakes" of their predecessors.

Reminder: The NASA’s Twins Study compared an astronaut (@StationCDRKelly) after a year in space with his twin on Earth (@CaptMarkKelly). Findings revealed impacts on genetics, immunity, and more. 🧵

https://twitter.com/NASAhistory/status/1905258517017002296

Surprise finding: Telomeres (chromosome protectors) lengthened in space but rapidly shortened back on Earth, raising aging concerns.

Since today is a light space news day (😉) I thought I would post about a topic I have very strong feelings about. Planetary Protection policy and why it must be overhauled. Caveat: A 🧵 Our story begins slightly before the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. This was a time when we had a mission to put humans on the Moon and then keep going to Mars. Von Braun and others had all the plans. Not a question of "if." unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwor…

This new round came after a couple years of really hard work. I could not be prouder of this team.

If you are a potential customer, collaborator, or employee, let me tell you a story...

https://twitter.com/K2SpaceCo/status/1890107726019350907

Last month I went to the grand opening of their new factory. It is a massive building, with the largest floor space I have seen since HT-1, SpaceX's Hawthorne HQ. K2 understands the innovation is just as much the the machine(s) that makes the machine, as it is their spacecraft.

Good read, especially the "Purpose" section. Bob is a valuable voice, and The Case for Mars is a must read (I read in the 90s). A couple comments on this new article. 🧵

https://twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/1885368975602966907

I really appreciate what he said about MSR. Time to ask difficult questions. Do we still need MSR at the great risk it poses to other planetary science ambitions? Might be time to make the decision that humans will bring samples back. Worth interrogating carefully either way.

Every morning this week I've been popping awake ~4-5am and I lie in bed unable to fall back asleep. Why? I find myself thinking about “clean sheet” NASA Goals/Missions. What would I have NASA do if we just started from scratch? What can be, unburdened by what has been?😉🧵 My wife thinks I am crazy, and this is the most ridiculous reason one could possibly have for not being able to sleep. I think it will continue until I post it all on X and get it out of my head. Folks on here can throw darts and pop my delusions…or make the ideas better.

With the new NASA head @rookisaacman coming in, and @DOGE looking for input, here is my paper napkin plan for what I would do with NASA if I had a magic wand (disclosure: I will never have this power and nobody really cares what I think, but I love, and once worked for NASA)🧵 Day 1
1) Create a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission with the objective of getting NASA out of the business of being the primary authority/owner/maintainer at 10 of the 15 current NASA Centers/Facilities. Give BRAC 60 days to make recommendations on what to close and how (including timeline). NASA last did this in 2005, resulting in some modest changes. This idea is politically fraught and most administrators would not survive suggesting this.

Ok, a high level thread on how decisions get made at NASA for the Commercial Crew program. This is going to be a freshman level lecture, not a grad school one, so please forgive me for the many small errors I will inevitably make (plus, its been a few years for me!).🧵 On the front line are the NASA requirement owners. Each requirement levied on a Commercial Crew partner, has an owner. They are the first to decide if a requirement is sufficiently verified or not, or if there is some controversy/disagreement.

Got some more insight into the whole "Starliner can't autonomously undock" stories from an insightful exchange with @jimmayjr that I want to highlight

Background: NASA considers configuration files to be flight software. Let me try to put this in layman terms. A 🧵 When people think of flight software they often think of thousands of lines of complicated code. That code does exist, but lots of other stuff is handled by "configuration files." Config files contain parameters & settings that you may want to change without touching "core" code.

Samantha's article on today's news provides the perfect lead picture to illustrate the nuance of this matter. A🧵

https://twitter.com/smasunaga/status/1694855069408407876

In the picture, everything I have circled in red is ITAR or EAR restricted. I have personally witnessed visitors try to take pictures here on a tour and promptly stopped by a roving security person, The box in yellow? The coffee stand.

Oh boy. This calls for a thread about Launch Commit Criteria (LCCs) and new rockets 🚀
🧵

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1565474936625438720

In an ideal scenario, every LCC has been vetted and backed up with test data and validated by a previous launch attempt or launch. But LCCs are among the very last ops products finished before a flight, especially a maiden flight. So...