Top all-time · #3562
Maciej Cegłowski
Personal blog · mceglowski.substack.comsciencesystemswriting
Maciej Cegłowski writes Mars For The Rest of Us, a personal blog at mceglowski.substack.com about science, systems and writing. Since 2026, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 38 times, most often “How should we think about Starship?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
A weekly-or-more deep dive on technical topics surrounding Mars exploration, from microbiology to rocket science and everywhere in between. Click to read Mars For The Rest of Us, by Maciej Cegłowski, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- How should we think about Starship?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-05-27
- L'Affaire Siloxane3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-06-09
- Who Is the Villain in Mars Sample Return?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-06-03
- Trying to understand SR-1 Freedom3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-09-15
- Mars for the Rest of Us3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-31
- Lost Dinosaur Cities on Mars3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-09-29
- Radiation Tradeoffs for Mars – How to get by when the sky wants you dead2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-30
- A Primer on Long-Duration Life Support2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-27
- What Happened with Mars Sample Return?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-05-01
- More Bounce to the Ounce – By Maciej Cegłowski2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-17
What Hacker News says?
> It’s directionally better to wait for manned missions to Mars so we can bring back tons of rocks or even do the research on Mars itself. I'm worried it's arguments like this that doomed MSR [0]. Why spend 11 billion to get a couple rocks back in 2040 when Starship will be sending astronauts in 2030? But now it seems the near term goals of the Starship program are changing. At this point, who knows when we'll send…
Comment linking /p/who-is-the-villain-in-mars-sample
on “NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead”Submitted Icy Moons Are Ocean Worlds as a story · 222 points
HN discussionShip will also have to be outfitted with a life-support system ahead of crewed missions, which could be coming relatively soon. For example, NASA picked Ship to the be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to land people on the moon for the first time in 2028 on the Artemis IV mission. Don't worry, there is absolutely no chance this will happen in 2028. There are many detailed takedowns o…
Comment linking /p/how-should-we-think-about-starship
on “SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today”Submitted The Plight of the Martian Farmer as a story · 15 points
HN discussion> The distinction is kind of meaningless Only if it helps you to call this "science", I would say. > advancing our engineering capabilities in space is advancing the science In this case, we are advancing our engineering capabilities to make humans survive in space, which is arguably completely useless . Not only that, but we keep focusing on the easier and fun part for engineers. A real problem for surviving in spa…
Comment linking /p/a-primer-on-long-duration-life-support
on “NASA Artemis II moon mission live launch broadcast”Submitted Trying to understand SR-1 Freedom as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSee also Idlewords’ essays “Why not Mars” and “The shape of a Mars mission” https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht... ““”Twenty years of tinkering with the much simpler systems on the space station have brought them no closer to reliability. And yet to get a crew to Mars, we’d need to get this stuff working like a Swiss watch. Humanity does not need…
Comment linking /p/laffaire-siloxane
on “The Mars Delusion”Submitted Lost Dinosaur Cities on Mars as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt appears the author seems to be neglecting his optimized website in favour of a Substack[1]. Never revisit(?) your heroes I suppose. [1] https://mceglowski.substack.com/
Comment linking /
on “The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)”Submitted Trying to understand SR-1 Freedom as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWhy should we believe that Starship launch costs will be that cheap when we don't believe Musk's other numbers? Where does that number come from? Has anyone looked into it? It doesn't cover launch costs directly, but here's a bearish take on reusability of the second stage: https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-...
Comment linking /p/how-should-we-think-about-starship
on “Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn”Submitted Lost Dinosaur Cities on Mars as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMaciej now has a Mars newsletter, which I obviously subscribed to immediately: https://mceglowski.substack.com/ I didn’t even have a strong interest in space before the dude started writing about it. Maciej could write about literal rocks and make it worthwhile to read.
Comment linking /
on “Artemis II is not safe to fly”Submitted Lost Dinosaur Cities on Mars as a story · 3 points
HN discussionfrom L'Affaire Siloxane? ( https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/laffaire-siloxane )
Comment linking /p/laffaire-siloxane
on “Half-Baked Product”Submitted Mars for the Rest of Us as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's kind of buried in the article, but it's worth noting that this vest is meant only to guard against solar storms, not cosmic rays; those remain a significant problem. > The vest, though, does nearly nothing against galactic cosmic rays (GCR), which are the other major radiation source astronauts face. Unlike solar storm radiation, GCR arrive continuously at much higher energies, which makes them harder to shield…
Comment linking /p/radiation-tradeoffs-for-mars
on “We've flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked”Submitted Trying to Understand Freedom – By Maciej Cegłowski as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted More Bounce to the Ounce – By Maciej Cegłowski as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted L'Affaire Siloxane as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How should we think about Starship? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How should we think about Starship? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bitter Lessons from the ISSpresso as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bitter Lessons from the ISSpresso as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Happened with Mars Sample Return? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Radiation Tradeoffs for Mars – How to get by when the sky wants you dead as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted More Bounce to the Ounce: The rocket that everyone is too chicken to build as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Diner's Guide to Mars as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted L'Affaire Siloxane as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who Is the Villain in Mars Sample Return? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
