He flies so high, he swoops so low

He knows exactly which way he's gonna go.

How Quick the Sun Can Drop Away

Today:

Today the sun rose, as it used to do

When its mission was to shine on you.

Since in unrelenting dark you're gone,

What now can be the purpose of  the sun?

Daniel G. Hoffman.

You Seen One Earth, You’ve Seen Them All

These two images were taken by @astro_reid only minutes apart. The stark difference is the result of camera settings. In the first, a longer shutter speed let in much more light from Earth, while the shorter shutter speed in the second emphasizes our planet's nighttime glow. pic.twitter.com/4H5gFymlcl

— NASA (@NASA) April 3, 2026

Iconic.  And Jack, maybe even your perspective has changed over 50+ years.

Selah.

Rocking Out at the K.K. Hoftheater Nächst Der Burg

Premiered 226 years ago today.

Love of Wisdom

Philosophia Perennis:

I turned: quivering yellow stars in blackness   

I wept: how speech may save a woman

The picture changes & promises the heroine   

That nighttime & meditation are a mirage

To discuss pro & contra here is mute

Do I not love you, day?

A pure output of teleological intentions

& she babbles, developing a picture-theory of language

Do I not play the delicate game of language?   

yes, & it is antecedent to the affairs of the world:   

The dish, the mop, the stove, the bed, the marriage   

& surges forth the world in which I love

I and I and I and I and I and I, infinitely reversible   

Yet never secure in the long morning texture

A poor existing woman-being, accept her broken heart   

& yet the earth is divinity, the sky is divinity

The nomads walk & walk.

Anne Waldman.

The Seagull Has Wings

Which way to the Moon?

This interactive tool lets you follow Artemis’s journey – and even scroll forward and backward in time!

Follow along with Eyes on the Solar System:https://t.co/tP3ecPR9GX pic.twitter.com/JsSI88r1BP

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 2, 2026

Uh...just staying silly and on theme with the post title.  This is actually a post about the Artemis II spacecraft.

That's a cool tool to see where Integrity is, where it was, and where it's going (spoiler alert: the fucking MOON).  And here's whole journey visualized:

If you are using the earth as a reference frame, the moon is actually doing a close flyby of Artemis II. pic.twitter.com/n5N0UBJaE2

— Lucid™ (@cammakingminds) April 2, 2026

Anyway, have I mentioned lately that we're going back to the fucking MOON?

#throwbackthursday

From my time living in an undisclosed location.  (Mar '20)

The Eagle Has Wings

It's about time we went back.

I still have one quibble with First Man, but rest assured I will be re-watching it this weekend when I'm not in March Madness mode (or checking in on the current mission).  

I love this particular scene so much.  The dream-like quality to everything (fitting, with CMP Collins played by Lukas Haas, who was also in Inception), the gorgeous, softly driving music, its intensity slowly building, and especially ~7 minutes in, when the LM is just a mote we see briefly before it drifts to the left, our attention focused on that vast, forbidding landscape and the gaping maw of a crater...

Godspeed, crew of Artemis II.

PS - Watching Integrity's proximity operations with the ICPS is not super exciting, but also super exciting.  NASA's showing the docking target on their stream, and it looks not unlike what you see on the CSM at ~4mins.  The cockpit controls are DRAMATICALLY different, of course.

The Arching Sky Is Calling

Lunar Tune:

The moon is mottled : dark shadows eat
Into the sockets of the skull of a world
Laid away in the blue winding-sheet. 

It dwindles and sharpens to the curled
And Cheshire grin of heaven vanishing.
But the twenty-eighth day returns it, pearled 

And possible as ever. Now a low-flying wing
Of silver, now rolling a leprous wheel,
It turns in the jewelled machine like a bearing. 

All lovers can distill this reel
Into their absolute and make it yield
A white wine only they can feel. 

To press this greatest grape from heaven's field
Lovers will toe the mark of their esteem.
For them it warms and covers like a shield 

But shakes the mad who rot along the seam
That binds them to their kind till on their bed
The darkside moonshine falls and kills the dream 

They once had had of being more than dead.

Gray Burr.

Jeux sans frontières

Whistling tunes, we hide in the dunes by the seaside.

Viento, agua, piedra

Wind, Water, Stone:

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by,

unmoving stone keeps still.

Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:

crossing and vanishing

through their empty names:

water, stone, wind.

Octavio Paz.

Paving the Way

Standing on the shoulders of giants.

As the Artemis II crew prepares for launch no earlier than April 1, they recently took a moment to pay homage to the Apollo 10 crew and the groundwork they laid for the Artemis II Moon mission. pic.twitter.com/uP8LpIDkcp

— NASA Artemis (@NASAArtemis) March 31, 2026

No whirlygigs on this mission, okay?  My old ticker probably will not take kindly to a repeat of this scene from Apollo 10:

We thought we were ready to stage, so we prepared to fire the ascent engine and blew the bolts. When we did, all hell broke loose. Snoopy went nuts.

“GIMBAL LOCK!” Tom screamed.

“SON-OF-A-BITCH!” I yelled over the open microphone. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” We were suddenly bouncing, diving and spinning all over the place as we blazed along at 3,000 miles per hour, less than 47,000 feet above the rocks and craters—much closer if you consider those damned mountains that seemed to be grinning around us like gigantic decayed teeth.

Thinking we were in Ags, Tom shouted, “Let’s go to Pings,” and again flipped the switch, which put us back into Ags. “Goddamn!” The computers were by now totally confused and useless. The spacecraft radar that was supposed to be locking onto Charlie Brown had found a much larger target, the Moon, and was trying to fly in that direction instead of toward the orbiting command module.

Things went topsy-turvy and I saw the surface corkscrew through my window, then the knife edge of a horizon, then blackness, then the Moon again, only this time coming from a different direction. We were totally out of control. “Okay,” I gasped. “Let’s … let’s make this burn on the Ags, babe.” We scrambled to stop the gyrations.

Five seconds later. Tom sent a fresh set of heart attacks to Mission Control, where people wearing headsets had jumped to their feet, not believing the onslaught of warnings that were flashing on their computer terminals. “We’re in trouble!” he called. Houston didn’t know what the hell was happening and things were moving much too fast for them to help.

That old devil Moon whipped past my window again, this time from left to right, and looked awfully close. I stole a glance at the eight ball, which spun crazily as it hunted a nonexistent horizon. Again the lunar surface dodged by, now bottom to top. “What the hell,” I called. “Let’s get on the Ags. I’ve got to get this damn thing.”

“Snoop, Houston,” called an alarmed Charlie Duke. “We show you close to gimbal lock!”

Thinking we might have an open thruster, similar to what had happened to Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott on Gemini 8, Tom overrode the computers and grabbed manual control of the spacecraft. Then, as swiftly as it had started, the horrifying little episode ended, a fifteen-second lifetime during which we made about eight cartwheels above the Moon, and Tom jerked Snoopy back onto a tight leash. Ole Mumbles do know how to fly. After analyzing the data, experts later surmised that had we continued spinning for only two more seconds, Tom and I would have crashed.

Space is hard, and terrifying at times.  At least Artemis II won't have to contend with rendezvous in lunar orbit.  Godspeed.

Don't you know

Talking about a revolution?

don’t bother this is navel gazing

Apocalypto for a Small Planet:

Drone strikes & opium poppies.

Oil spills & poisoned wells.

Drought zone. Famine. War zone.

Tess Taylor.