Top all-time · #8176
Peter Hague
Personal blog · planetocracy.orgscienceeconomics
Peter Hague writes Planetocracy, a personal blog at planetocracy.org about science and economics. Since 2024, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 12 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Peter Hague's reviews of the book A City on Mars and his writing on Starship and Mars colonisation arguments. The links are used to rebut the book's science and to answer critics of Starship.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The Future of Humanity in Space.
Most-linked posts?
- /p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-i2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-06-10
What Hacker News says?
>A City on Mars That book is full of bad science. Some of the silly claims are addressed here: https://planetocracy.org/p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-ii
Comment linking /p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-ii
on “NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9”Submitted Starship Flight 4: A Turning Point – By Peter Hague as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA reusable Starship being churned out one a day at the Starfactory can achieve that: A Kalpana One space habitat is estimated to require a mass of 10 billion kilograms, or 10 million tons. One Starship launch can place 100 tons in orbit. 10,000 Starships, launching once a day, can place 10 million tons into orbit in 10 days. From there, tapping extraterrestrial resources becomes far more feasible, and using them to…
Comment linking /
on “SpaceX's fourth Starship launch approved for Thursday”Submitted The New Berlin Wall as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWasn’t that convincing for me. The hard science elements seemed a bit cherry-picked and the later sections on governance and laws seem to want almost a wide spread agreement across multiple countries on every detail before people are allowed to go. A multi-part review [1] is available which detailed more aspects quite well. In short, people will go for a multitude of reasons (whether it is sensible or not). [1] http…
Comment linking /p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-i
on “Everything about Mars is the worst (2017)”Submitted Gilt Futurism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs someone from within the space industry, their arguments are beyond bad. Indeed they miss the point entirely. If you don’t see much people talking about it, it’s because most people in the industry don’t want to stoop to that level. But there are a few who have bothered. Here is one of the better ones: https://planetocracy.org/p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-i
Comment linking /p/review-of-a-city-on-mars-part-i
on “Starship V3”Submitted A Draft Roadmap for European Colonisation of Space as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Steps Towards Mars as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Mars Cyclers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A new way of creating space as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Bridge to the Future The challenges of the environment and of settling space as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
