Zapata Talks NASA

I have not written a blog in about six weeks, having chosen to dedicate my time to what has become an unexpectedly intensive writing project.

This is a story about technology, not as a matter itself, contained and explainable with a spreadsheet, but as an action inseparable from a reaction.

Inflation.

A few weeks ago, the US Department of Defense canceled a project to upgrade the ground control systems for the Global Positioning System (GPS).

On Wednesday, April 1st, 2026, the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) finally launched the Orion spacecraft with a crew.

-Now we have a clear path to the next decision, removing crew from Artemis II- This morning, we awoke to the news, first reported by Eric Berger at Ars Technica, about a major shakeup in the NASA Artemis program – that assortment of NASA’s back-to-the-Moon

Curious minds want to know.

Imagine a world turned on a very peculiar lathe of heaven where risk cannot be measured.

In my last post, I wrote about the decision to put crew aboard the second flight of the SLS/Orion system to journey around the Moon.

Choices, a thin number, and Artemis II.

This should be the headline, one day soon, in a world where these decisions are primarily technical and think long term.

Who would have thought rockets and an internet in the sky, and not “cost-plus” either, would create the wealthiest person in the world?

This will sound suspiciously improbable, a story that changed hands too many times, becoming colorful Kennedy Space Center folklore.

In 2005, NASA astronauts were a couple of months away from launching aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

If NASA were your bank account, investments, or 401K, after seeing the headlines, would you check your balance more often or less?