Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5 | Hacker News Reader

Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

projectpluto.com

220 pointsryannevius82 comments

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

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

The main drawback with the page's unstyled design is that the page is not mobile friendly.

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

It's obviously not designed for mobile but I wouldn't call it unfriendly, it's still fast and pretty easy to read. It also works perfectly with Firefox reader mode.

Firefox's reader mode works really well on the article, I wonder why it's not the default for unstyled pages.

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

It wasn't a good idea even in 2008.

I don't have a smartphone to test on. What happens without this?

You essentially see the desktop version zoomed out by default with tiny text. You need to zoom in, but the line length is still desktop sized so you need to scroll left and right as well as up and down to read it.

And mobile browsers keep this defective by design default even they now all have an actual desktop mode that does pretty much the same thing but more consistently.

If you want to see it for yourself: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode

Never understood why we need to add this ridiculous tag for mobile. CSS/HTML are responsive by default.

But tables are not. The widest row overrides the rest, making everything else tiny.

That's a feature for me, not a bug. Not everything has to be everything-friendly all the time, especially if it makes it easier to consume content or stuff.

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

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

What part of this is actually not mobile friendly? I’d argue this is laid out pretty well compared to some websites that are “mobile friendly” but load poorly or make it impossible to scroll.

If you need to scroll the viewport left and right to read a line of text, that seems kind of unfriendly.

On my screen it fit perfectly after double tapping

I mean it fits, but i don't find the text size particularly usable for mobile

On vivaldi mobile on an android phone (with an approximately 6x3" display), i see this as the first line:

> On 2026 August 5, within a few minutes of 06:35 UTC, an upper stage (section) of a rocket used for a lunar mission will hit the

And for me, reading a 124 character wide line on a 3" wide screen (75mmish) is not particularly comfortable.

When oriented horizontally, the text becomes larger than a lot of the ios system text size

I used reading mode on Safari and it was perfect for reading.

In this pages case, I disagree. I feel like when pages try to force their 'aspect ratio / styling' to fit the view port I have to fight more with it. at least as it stands I can zoom as needed on this page, I can appreciate the web devs 'vision' as in how it probably appeared on their machine. I honestly hate mobile sites unless they are done just super super well which is harder than expected. https://rockauto.com is one such site that I think works really well on mobile.

A page like this, with minimal styling, the whole point is the author does not care, the author expects the user's agent to style the document optimally for it's dimensions., the optimal in responsive design. this was the original vision for the web, the agent supplies most of the style.

Except it does not, for some weird reason unstyled pages like this which should look great on mobile look like ass. Why are mobile browsers defaults so wrong?

This hits hard because this is how I build my pages (you can probably tell I am not a front end designer) I just want to put well structured content out and let the users agent display it in the manner that suits the user best. And it mostly works, it will not win any awards but it looks fine. Until someone asks why it looks like the dog's breakfast on mobile.

As mentioned above, adding a viewport meta tag will make most unstyled pages look much better on mobile.

> Why are mobile browsers defaults so wrong?

History. When mobile browsers first appeared they had to default to a desktop page width to avoid breaking exisiting content, much of which was either built in layout tables or used CSS that assumed a wider window. The viewport meta tag was introduced (by Apple in Mobile Safari when the iPhone first came out, IIRC) so developers could override that behaviour. I think the defaults made a lot of sense at the time, and Apple made the right choice.

I kinda think it's more mobile friendly than desktop friendly (although it isn't great on either.)

It's sorta hard to read text that spans the whole screen and at least on mobile, that's not nearly as wide.

You don't have to make your browser as wide on your screen on desktop either.

> not mobile friendly.

It’s not what I’d call mobile unfriendly either.

I had to zoom in slightly but then it’s perfectly readable in landscape.

Some very basic inline responsive CSS would make it work great in portrait too.

But the thing is, with no ads, complex layout, or other bullshit, it’s perfectly usable on mobile as is.

I’d certainly take this over any website from any major media outlet, other than those that are publicly funded like the BBC (and, even then, only in the UK because they show ads everywhere else).

You don't need any responsive CSS as HTML is responsive by default. It's just mobile browsers that have decided they know better and you need to add a meta tag to tell them to actually follow the standard.

> The main drawback with the page's unstyled design is that the page is not mobile friendly.

Then fix mobile browsers to display it correctly.

They’re already fixed, just add the meta tag if you give the slightest semblance of a shit. Otherwise don’t and people may be less inclined to engage with your content on their phone.

Add what in a meta tag?

Why should web developers change their content to work on defective browsers?

Exactly, all the meta tag does is tell mobile browsers to follow the standard as written before they existed. They should just do that by default.

Because it wouldn’t work for every website and the web almost never breaks backward compatibility.

So if I have a block of totally unstyled HTML, why wouldn't a phone browser just display it in the most sensible way possible?

It would work a lot better than what mobile browsers are doing now. The only websites that can be argued to be helped by that were those with fixed table layouts - but those are still pretty unusable even with the standards-noncompliant hack. And websites that were mobile-compatible before like plain HTML sites like the TFA are needlessly broken.

I read it on a mobile device and found it perfectly legible. I like small text though.

With Firefox Reader Mode (also available on a few other browsers) it's perfect.

Though that rather invites the question of why browser defaults are so poor.

The page is great on my phone. Loads instantly unlike any other mobile website in existence, seemingly.

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

You could easily make a browser extension that passes each page through an AI agent that will rewrite the page in the given style. It’s fun.

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

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

It highlighted something that I hadn't realised had been impacting me. The latency of the modern web.

There are a lot of hyperlinks on there and clicking around on various related articles was near instantaneous. It actually made navigation very useful and not feel like a burden. I will take that over any visual flair any day.

I wish the entire web was in this format. Really. May need a bit of work to navigate around but very fast, no BS, no tracking.

The author's email obfuscation holds up well against small local models too, just for kicks neither Qwen-9B, Gemma-12B, nor GPT-OSS-20B could read it, giving results like "poc.otulptcejorp@otulm".

I miss FTP man… let’s go back

Nothing stopping you — it's still there and still works. I use it for one of my sites.

Yeah but when I wear my FileZilla shirt at concerts I never get the girl

> What are the drawbacks to reverting to this type web publishing?

It's nearly impossible to get overlapping text without css...

Gotta love the instantaneous load

> Over 600 Falcon 9 rockets have been launched. Most of the upper stages are either in orbits close to the earth or have already re-entered the earth's atmosphere. A few are orbiting the sun. The object that will be hitting the moon has been orbiting the earth for a little over a year.

Just imagine what you could build with 600 Falcon 9 upper stages.

After so much time hearing about how SpaceX dumps rocket debris all over Boca Chica it's kind of amusing that they're also leaving trash on the moon. It would be cool if we sent people back to the moon one day and they took photos next to junk like this. Or whatever is left of it.

You realize we've been smashing shit into the moon since Apollo right?

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

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

I believe it's actually unresolved whether NASA left poop on the moon or not: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37952/did-apollo-l...

The Soviet Union was quite busy with their Luna program which made lunar impacts commonplace, including

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_15

Luna 15 was not only in lunar orbit at the same time as Apollo 11, but also sent to crash into Mare Crisium while USA astronauts were still on the surface at Tranquility Base.

There is not much rocket debris in Boca Chica. If you do find something sell it on ebay.

Debris of rockets, no.

Debris caused by rockets, yes. Tons of it. Go visit and see for yourself.

From the pictures I just saw online, it seems like there have indeed been cases of rocket debris as well.

This "trash" could provide a lot of valuable metal and maybe other stuff, for future moon missions. I wouldn't really call it trash.

Thats what I say about the broken down car in my front yard, but it is still frowned upon.

Welp, my initial thought based on the link was that this was part of Project Pluto:

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

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

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

Soon we'll need to call Roger Wilco to take care of all this junk.

> Generally speaking, such objects are very poorly tracked.

Why is there not any regulations about this stuff? So we can't throw a napkin out the window (not that I condone littering), but SpaceX can just literally throw stuff into space that either re-enters Earth (adds to air and environmental issues), swings around in space untracked, or hits the Moon without any reprecussions? Why isn't it on SpaceX to track the trash they're throwing up?

It's NASA's and the FCC's responsibility and this is allowed.

What's really impressive is that, according to the picture with labels, it's going to crash near Mos Eisley.

EDIT: sorry, Moseley ; )

something they didn't mention, what is in this upper stage? I'm presuming a rocket motor and some fuel is that right..? They do a calculation of energy release on impact, but I'm wondering if there is any fuel left and whether that would affect their equation?

I can't really think of much besides maybe some batteries. The fuel and oxidizer are supposed to be dumped shortly after payload deployment to prevent any issues with blowing up. Even if it wasn't dumped, its been a year, so it would have boiled off.

Like most upper stages, Falcon 9 makes itself inert after a mission by venting any remaining propellant. Otherwise there's a risk that propellant could boil off, increasing pressure until the tank explodes, creating a debris cloud. Since pretty much any collision in space is catastrophic, it's easier to track and avoid one large piece of debris rather than a bunch of small ones.

Space 1999

Is there a discord I can join to follow along live?

> though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of.

My thoughts exactly.

someone send them a littering bill

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

That's the neat thing. Dumping on the moon or anywhere (other than Earth) isn't possible, as the litter is infinitely more valuable than the existing dust and rock. It's as if someone was dumping gold bricks into your yard. You really wouldn't mind at all, and would ask for more. The only exception would be radioactive waste, as that is less valuable than the surrounding dust and rock.

What logic tree arrives at this conclusion and doesn't arrive at the same conclusion for dumping in, idk, Arches National Park?

The moon is a lifeless rock with nobody on it. That seems like a better place for garbage to go than the earth. And since it's going to impact the moon at 2.43km/sec, I don't think there will be much visible stuff remaining, just a crater and some bits of aluminum.

Also what's the alternative? Moon missions don't have enough extra propellant to go back to earth and deorbit. They might have enough to move to a relatively stable orbit, but then it's just long-lived orbital debris.

Same rationale for dumping chemicals in the river. It's a river! It all just flows away! There's so much water, who could even notice?

Not really, rivers flow into oceans where there is life that is impacted by the chemicals, not to mention the life in the river itself. So its not the same rationale. Moon IS a lifeless rock. I agree with the parent, if there was an option between trashing the earth and moon, I would pick moon in a heartbeat.

It's not just a lifeless rock, it's a horribly inhospitable location. You go through 2 week long days of hotter than boiling temperatures followed by 2 week long nights that are about as close to absolute zero as they are to 'just' freezing. All the while you're getting constantly pounded by meteorites, to say nothing of more typical issues like radiation, dust, and so on.

It's why I think the idea of starting with the Moon as a jumping-off to Mars is illogical. Mars is much further but is a million times more hospitable in every other way, and has presumably much more to offer in term of unknown unknowns than the Moon. We only found out that Martian regolith is relatively water rich (about 2% water by volume) in 2013, which is kind of insane if you consider that the first probe successfully sent to Mars was in 1962.

> lifeless rock

Do you know that for a fact? Unlikely sure, but the question isn't helped by ramming a thing that might have Earth-born life on it into it.

Yes. There is no liquid water on the moon. There is no atmosphere. No life can exist there.

The moon is struck by meteors quite frequently. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter noticed 200 new craters over seven years.[1] Compared to what nature does to the surface, a few rocket bodies and impactor probes is a rounding error.

1. https://lroc.im-ldi.com/images/943

> There is no liquid water on the moon.

That is not definitive. There is frozen water and even water that sublimates on the bright side of the Moon. And the internal core of the Moon is quite hot. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there are pockets of liquid water.

> Compared to what nature does to the surface, a few rocket bodies and impactor probes is a rounding error.

It's not an excuse. I also didn't comment about the impact itself, although it would be interesting to see a comparison to the meteors it gets hit by compared to the rocket shell, comparing speeds and size.

I was obviously referring to the surface of the moon, where impacts happen. It is impossible for liquid water to exist on or near the surface, as the lack of atmosphere means that water either freezes or sublimes (and is then split into hydrogen & oxygen atoms by solar wind, causing the hydrogen to escape into space).

Yes, it is physically possible for liquid water to exist deep below the poles of the moon, but it would escape over time. Since there’s no way for any underground water to be replenished, and the moon is slowly cooling, it is very likely that all water on the moon is in non-liquid form (either ice, chemically bound up in rocks, or trace amounts of vapor that is soon to escape into space).

Meteors impact at 5-10x the velocity of the rocket body, meaning they have 12-50x more kinetic energy for the same mass. Their sizes vary, but a 4 ton booster traveling at 2.43km/sec is not going to be the most energetic impact on the moon this year.

> The moon is a lifeless rock with nobody on it.

Wait till you find out of "Götterdämmerung"

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

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