Top all-time · #318
Casey Handmer
Personal blog · caseyhandmer.wordpress.comscienceeconomics
Casey Handmer's personal blog at caseyhandmer.wordpress.com covers science and economics. Since 2019, 163 different Hacker News readers have linked it 358 times, most often “Starship is still not understood”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Casey Handmer's posts for explanations of why Starship matters, for the math behind cheap local solar, and for technical detail on Starlink.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- One commenter calls a post a 'great resource' on why Starship is groundbreaking; another calls one a 'pretty good explainer'. Others say 'worth reading' and 'hi
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Space, Travel, Technology, 3D Printing, Energy, Writing
Most-linked posts?
- Starship is still not understood12 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2021-10-28
- Terraform Industries Whitepaper9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2022-02-03
- Space-based solar power is not a thing (2019)8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-12-27
- Science upside for Starship8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-11-17
- We're going to need a lot of solar panels7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-07-22
- The Unstoppable Battery Onslaught – Casey Handmer's Blog7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- The SpaceX Starship is a big deal7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-10-30
- Starlink is a big deal7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-11-03
- We need more water than rain can provide: refilling rivers with desalination6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-11-20
- You Should Be Working on Hardware6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2023-08-25
What Hacker News says?
Eventually it convinces everybody that "quantity in space" is possible. Moving to projects where you don't have to count every ounce. It opens the path to wild schemes, in amount of weight that could be moved. And why "eventually"? SpaceX should have already convinced people of that. Yeah it's not yet in production, but the momentum and progress have been amazing to witness. (The previous one was convincing everyone…
Comment linking /2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/
on “Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]”Submitted We're going to need a lot of solar panels as a story · 823 points
HN discussionMy wife asked "Why is this a big deal?", so I gave her a link to Handmer's 2021 explanation: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st... She's not an enthusiast; she's got an impression from SciFi that going to mars shouldn't be that hard.
Comment linking /2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/
on “Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]”Submitted The SpaceX Starship is a big deal as a story · 432 points
HN discussionThe next better thing won't likely take 30 years. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st... is correct. No NASA planning, including for space telescopes, shows any understanding of how much Starship changes the game. Instead of one, we can put up a network of telescopes. And try out crazy ideas. Here is a concrete example. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231032662_A_Cryogen... lays out…
Comment linking /2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/
on “James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live”Submitted Starship is still not understood as a story · 309 points
HN discussionA good reading on why you should understand your building blocks: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/15/on-reasoning-b...
Comment linking /2019/10/15/on-reasoning-backwards-from-architecture-to-implicit-requirements/
on “Build Your Own X”Submitted We Can Terraform the American West as a story · 246 points
HN discussionI would think that the higher oil goes, the more incentive there is for clean energy. Here's a guy who actually formed a company based on that premise. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/terraform-indu...
Comment linking /2022/02/03/terraform-industries-whitepaper/
on “Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize”Submitted Domes are overrated as a story · 225 points
HN discussionHe addresses this in the whitepaper. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/terraform-indu... Ctrl-f "Tree" to find the FAQ.
Comment linking /2022/02/03/terraform-industries-whitepaper/
on “We're going to need a lot of solar panels”Submitted So you want to build a carbon capture company as a story · 194 points
HN discussionThe same author has a really good blog article with the math showing that it's cheaper to build solar locally in places with poor insolation than it is to build high voltge DC lines to bring it in from sunnier places. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
Comment linking /2020/12/27/the-future-of-electricity-is-local/
on “We're going to need a lot of solar panels”Submitted Science upside for Starship as a story · 191 points
HN discussionTheir white paper covers it, linked from their site. > CO2 concentration is performed using a closed lime/calcite calcination cycle, operating at ambient temperature and pressure. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/terraform-indu...
Comment linking /2022/02/03/terraform-industries-whitepaper/
on “We're going to need a lot of solar panels”Submitted Powering the Lunar Base as a story · 176 points
HN discussionI agree! The best websites are those maintained by individuals without a profit motive. Here's a short list that I've started collecting: - Kevin Kelly: kk.org - Patrick Collison: patrickcollison.com - Patrick McKenzie: kalzumeus.com - David Perell: perell.com - Berthub.eu - Alexey Guzey: https://guzey.com/ - https://www.gwern.net/index - https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ - https://dcgross.com/ - Paul Graham: pau…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted NASA Is Worth Saving as a story · 145 points
HN discussionJust stack the mirrors inside Starship, and assemble them in space. Below, an example of a 300m diameter telescope using 8-meter mirror segments assembled in-orbit https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/science-upside...
Comment linking /2021/11/17/science-upside-for-starship/
on “Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astronomy”Submitted “The Martian” + Starship as a story · 141 points
HN discussion> Instead I've followed him and directly what he says for about the last 8 years. and you are comparing that to the first hadn experience of some of his closest associates. The dude pays 3 different PR companies full time salaries, you haven't followed him, you have followed his propaganda. > him doing mostly the same things he did before When he said that he was proud Tesla got 100% on the lgbtq score 4 years in a…
Comment linking /2024/01/02/elon-musk-is-n
on “DeepSeek Open Infra: Open-Sourcing 5 AI Repos in 5 Days”Submitted The future of electricity is local as a story · 140 points
HN discussionWhat you just wrote reads like bad LLM output. I read very little "puff pieces". Instead I've followed him and directly what he says for about the last 8 years. And I've seen how the media has turned against him, and him doing mostly the same things he did before is now somehow bad. Nah. He's the same man. And every common argument against him is so easily shot down. But you don't seem to care and act like a flat ea…
Comment linking /2024/01/02/elon-musk-is-not-understood/
on “DeepSeek Open Infra: Open-Sourcing 5 AI Repos in 5 Days”Submitted Starlink is a big deal as a story · 134 points
HN discussionWhile some of the satellites do have point to point laser links for communicating directly with other satellites in the constellation, it's not widely utilized yet, and all communications are ground station to satellite and back to base station. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/starlink-packe... It's unlikely that anyone's traffic is passing through multiple satellite links at this time, but that may ch…
Comment linking /2020/09/23/starlink-packet-routing/
on “Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders”Submitted Don’t stage off Starship as a story · 126 points
HN discussionThat might be Heinlein's most annoying quote ever and boy does it have competition. It is very expensive to change orbits. If you had two space stations like the ISS with ascending nodes 180 degrees from each other it would be about as expensive to transit between them as it is to launch a rocket from the Earth to begin with. See https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/there-are-no-g... You've got the advantag…
Comment linking /2019/10/02/there-are-no-gas-stations-in-space/
on “The Lunacy of Artemis”Submitted A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest as a story · 125 points
HN discussionSee Casey Handmer[1]. We are underproducing solar PV by at least 4.8 TW (nameplate) per year: we're only producing about 4% of what we need. There is no such thing as overproduction, there are only manufacturing bottlenecks in batteries, electrolyzers, and reverse osmosis water plants. 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-going-to-...
Comment linking /2022/07/22/were-going-to-need-a-lot-of-solar-panels/
on “More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade”Submitted Supersonic Electric Flight as a story · 125 points
HN discussion
