HAPPY
BIRTHDAY
NASA.

On 20th July 1969, NASA landed two men on the Moon and returned them safely to Earth. The onboard computer — the Apollo Guidance Computer — had 4KB of RAM and ran at 0.043 MHz. For context, a 1990 washing machine had more computing power. A 1990 washing machine. The kind with the dial you turn. The kind that shakes across the kitchen floor during the spin cycle and walks itself into the cupboard under the stairs. That washing machine. More powerful than the computer that went to the Moon.

NASA would like you to know that this was achieved through exceptional engineering, meticulous planning, and the brilliance of thousands of dedicated scientists and engineers who worked around the clock for a decade. FakeX would like you to know that our 3.3-Stage Rocket has not yet achieved 3.3 feet of altitude, and we have a laptop. We have a very good laptop. It has 16GB of RAM. It has a sticker on it. The sticker says 'SPACE OR BUST.' We are thinking about this. We are thinking about it very hard.

The Lunar Roving Vehicle — the Moon buggy — was used on Apollo 15, 16, and 17. It weighed 210kg. It was 3.1 metres long and 1.83 metres wide. The Lunar Module descent stage — the bit that actually landed on the Moon, the bit with the legs, the bit that sat on the lunar surface while the astroNOTs drove around in the buggy — had a descent stage diameter of approximately 4.2 metres. The buggy was folded and stowed in a quadrant of the descent stage.

We have looked at the dimensions. We have looked at them several times. We have drawn diagrams. We have used a ruler. We have used two rulers. We have consulted colleagues. The colleagues have also looked at the dimensions. One colleague said 'it must have been folded very cleverly.' We said yes, we know it was folded, we asked about the folded dimensions. The colleague has not replied to the follow-up. We consider this a pattern. We have written to NASA three times. They have not replied. We have written to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. They replied. They said the buggy was folded. We know it was folded. We asked about the folded dimensions. They have not replied to the follow-up. We consider this a second pattern. Happy birthday, NASA. Please reply to our letter. We have a ruler. We are ready.

On 6th February 1971, during the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard — the first American in space, a naval aviator, a test pilot, a Rear Admiral, a man who had trained for years to be an AstroNOT, a man who had been through the most rigorous selection process in human history, a man who had been to space before — smuggled a six-iron golf club head onto the Moon. He had attached it to a sample collection tool. He had planned this. He had thought about it. He had packed it. He had gone through all the training, all the preparation, all the checklists, all the pre-launch inspections, and at some point — at some specific, deliberate, premeditated point — he had thought: I am going to the Moon and I am bringing a golf club.

He hit two golf balls. He described the second shot as going 'miles and miles and miles.' It went approximately 40 yards. The balls are still on the Moon. They will be there for approximately 100 million years. Alan Shepard's golf balls will outlast every human institution, every building, every record, every language currently spoken on Earth. They will be there when the Sun expands into a red giant. They will be there when the solar system ends. Alan Shepard's golf balls are, in the long view, the most permanent thing humanity has ever put anywhere. NASA's official position is that this was a lighthearted moment. FakeX's position is that we salute the golf club. We salute it unreservedly.

In 2006, NASA admitted that it had lost or taped over the original high-quality telemetry recordings from the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The original slow-scan television footage — the footage that was broadcast to the world on 20th July 1969, the footage of the first human beings to walk on the Moon, the footage of one of the most significant moments in the history of our species — was recorded on magnetic tape. The tapes were subsequently reused. For other recordings. Because NASA needed the tapes. The tapes cost approximately $0.50 each. The Moon landing cost $25 billion.

NASA also lost the original design schematics for the Saturn V rocket — the most powerful rocket ever built, which successfully launched 13 times with zero failures, which remains to this day the only rocket to have carried human beings beyond low Earth orbit. The engineers who built it retired or died. The schematics were lost. The knowledge of how to build the most successful rocket in human history was, in the administrative sense, misplaced. It is gone. We cannot build another one. We have tried. We are still trying. FakeX has the schematics for the 3.3-Stage Rocket. They are on a Post-it note on the fridge. The Post-it note is yellow. It says '3.3ft — roughly — pointing up.' We know where it is. We check on it regularly. We consider this an institutional advantage of the first order.

On 28th January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch. All seven crew members were lost. It was a national tragedy. The crew were: Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe — a schoolteacher, the first civilian selected to fly in space, who had been chosen from 11,000 applicants. They are remembered. The Rogers Commission investigated. The O-ring failure was identified. Significant reforms were made to NASA's safety culture. The shuttle flew again.

We note, with the deepest respect for the memory of the Challenger crew, that the Rogers Commission found that NASA management had been informed of concerns about the O-rings in cold temperatures prior to the launch. We note that the launch proceeded. We note that the temperature on the morning of 28th January 1986 was 28°F — the coldest launch day in shuttle history. We are not drawing conclusions beyond those already drawn by the Rogers Commission. We are noting that the Rogers Commission drew them very clearly. Happy birthday, NASA. The reforms that followed Challenger saved lives. We acknowledge this. We acknowledge it sincerely.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April 1990. It cost $1.5 billion. It was 30 years in development. It was the most anticipated scientific instrument in history. Upon deployment, it was discovered that the primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. The error was 2.2 micrometres — about one fiftieth the width of a human hair. The telescope was effectively blind. NASA had launched a $1.5 billion telescope with a mirror that had been measured incorrectly. The world's most expensive telescope could not see.

The fix — a corrective optics package called COSTAR — was installed by Space Shuttle astroNOTs in 1993 in one of the most complex spacewalks ever performed. It worked. Hubble went on to produce some of the most extraordinary images in the history of science. The Hubble Deep Field. The Pillars of Creation. The images that showed us the universe is 13.8 billion years old. FakeX acknowledges this is one of the greatest recoveries in the history of science. We also note — and we note this with genuine scientific interest — that the mirror was tested before launch and the test equipment was also wrong. Both the mirror and the test equipment were wrong in exactly the same way. The probability of this occurring by chance is, we have calculated, very low. We find this statistically interesting. We are not saying anything further. We are simply noting it. We are noting it with great interest.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter — a $327 million spacecraft, the product of years of engineering work by hundreds of people, a spacecraft designed to study the Martian climate and serve as a communications relay for future Mars missions — was lost because one engineering team used metric units and another used imperial units. The spacecraft entered the Martian atmosphere at the wrong angle and was destroyed. The cause was that Lockheed Martin's software was outputting data in pound-force seconds. NASA's navigation software expected newton seconds. No one checked. The spacecraft cost $327 million. The check would have cost nothing. No one did the check.

FakeX uses one unit of measurement for all 3.3-Stage Rocket calculations. The unit is 'roughly.' As in: 'roughly 3.3 feet.' As in: 'roughly pointing upward.' As in: 'roughly the right amount of fuel, which is none yet because we haven't sourced an engine, but when we do source an engine we will put in roughly the right amount.' We consider our approach to unit standardisation to be, in the circumstances, more robust than NASA's. We are noting this without further comment. We have no further comment. The comment stands alone.

The International Space Station was assembled in orbit over 13 years by 15 countries using components built on different continents by different contractors in different languages using different engineering standards, different fastener systems, different electrical standards, and different toilet designs. It has been continuously inhabited since November 2000. It travels at 17,500 miles per hour. It orbits Earth every 90 minutes. It is the most complex structure ever assembled by human beings, and it was assembled in space, by people in spacesuits, using tools that had to be specially designed not to float away.

FakeX has attempted to assemble the 3.3-Stage Rocket in the car park behind the facility. We are one country. We are, in fact, three people. We have had difficulties with the wind. The wind is not in space. The wind is in the car park. The car park is not travelling at 17,500 miles per hour. The car park is stationary. The car park is, in the technical sense, the least challenging assembly environment imaginable, and we have still had difficulties with the wind. We are aware that our assembly challenges are, in the comparative sense, modest. We acknowledge this. We acknowledge it with some embarrassment. Happy birthday, NASA. The ISS is genuinely extraordinary. We mean that from the bottom of our hearts.

Voyager 1 was launched on 5th September 1977. It is currently approximately 24 billion kilometres from Earth. It is the most distant human-made object in existence. It is still transmitting. Its signal — travelling at the speed of light — takes approximately 22 hours to reach Earth. It is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that was built in 1977. It has been operating continuously for nearly 50 years. It is in interstellar space. It has left the solar system. It is beyond the heliosphere. It is in the void between stars. It is still working.

Voyager 1 has 68KB of memory. It has 8-track tape drives. It was programmed in assembly language by people who are now in their 70s and 80s and who have to be called out of retirement when something goes wrong because they are the only people who still understand the code. It has been running continuously since 1977 on 1977 technology, in interstellar space, at temperatures approaching absolute zero, bombarded by cosmic radiation, and it is still sending data. FakeX's laptop, which has 16GB of RAM and was purchased in 2023, required a full restart last Tuesday because of a Windows update. The Windows update was for the printer driver. We do not have a printer. We are thinking about this. We are thinking about it very, very hard.

NASA spent approximately $12 million developing the Fisher Space Pen — a pen that could write in zero gravity, in a vacuum, underwater, over grease, at temperatures from -30°F to +250°F, and at any angle including upside down. The story goes that the Soviets, faced with the same problem, simply used a pencil. This story is, technically, not entirely accurate — pencils are a fire hazard in pure oxygen environments and graphite particles are a contamination risk that can damage equipment and cause short circuits — but the broad point stands: NASA spent $12 million on a pen. The pen works. It is an excellent pen. It writes upside down. We have tested this.

FakeX uses a biro. The biro cost 30p. It was in a pot on the desk. We do not know whose biro it is. It does not work in zero gravity because we have not yet achieved zero gravity. It works fine in the car park. It works fine on the Post-it note on the fridge. It works fine in the minutes. We consider our stationery budget to be appropriately calibrated to our operational altitude, which is currently zero feet above the car park. Happy birthday, NASA. The Space Pen is genuinely impressive. We have one. We bought it from the internet. It cost £14.99. It writes upside down. We have tested this also.

The Saturn V rocket was 111 metres tall. It weighed 2.8 million kilograms fully fuelled. It produced 34.5 million newtons of thrust at launch — more than the combined thrust of every aircraft in the US Air Force at the time. It launched 13 times. It never failed. Not once. Not a partial failure. Not a near-miss. Not a 'we got away with it.' Thirteen launches. Thirteen successes. It put 12 human beings on the Moon and brought all of them home. It is the most successful rocket in history by any measure.

The schematics are gone. The engineers are dead or retired. We cannot build another one. We have tried. The Space Launch System — NASA's current heavy-lift rocket — took 17 years to develop, cost $23 billion, and has launched once. The Saturn V took 6 years to develop, cost $6.4 billion in today's money, and launched 13 times without a single failure. We are not drawing conclusions. We are noting the numbers. The numbers are: 13 launches, 0 failures, 6 years, $6.4 billion, schematics gone. We are noting them. We are noting them with great respect and a small amount of bewilderment.

The Space Shuttle flew 135 missions between 1981 and 2011. It carried 355 people to space. It deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. It built the International Space Station. It was the most complex flying machine ever built. It was also the most dangerous — with a 1-in-68 chance of catastrophic failure per mission, which NASA knew, which was higher than any other crewed spacecraft in history, and which they flew anyway because the programme was too big to stop and the schedule was too important to delay and the budget was too committed to cancel.

Challenger in 1986. Columbia in 2003. Fourteen people. Two disasters. Fourteen people who knew the risk and flew anyway because they believed in what they were doing. The shuttle flew again after both. It flew 87 more times after Challenger. It flew 22 more times after Columbia. It kept flying until 2011 when it was retired, not because it failed, but because it was old and expensive and the programme ended. The last shuttle mission landed on 21st July 2011. The crew of STS-135 were: Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus, and Rex Walheim. They are remembered. Happy birthday, NASA. The shuttle was extraordinary. The shuttle was also a warning. Both things are true.