Aging and death is as inescapable as taxes and leaf blowers, but why? How? Despite millennia of obsession and billions of dollars in research, we’re still far from understanding the biochemic…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on countering common misconceptions in space journalism. The usual disclaimers apply: These blogs are my own lousy, misinformed opinions ineptly projected on a cheap website with …| Casey Handmer's blog
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) and fully general humanoid robotics are just around the corner, or so many people believe. So it’s time to try to un…| Casey Handmer's blog
3 posts published by cjhandmer during February 2025| Casey Handmer's blog
1 post published by cjhandmer during August 2025| Casey Handmer's blog
A short post where I collate some info related to the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, various aspirational objectives and questions. Table Mountain Traverse Table Mountain is at the north we…| Casey Handmer's blog
Hyperdrive City is the birth of the American future. A reminder that we once built soaring structures of steel, cement, stone, and steady certainty in a better future. To think it, to utter it, is to remind ourselves that we’re not at the end of history. We’re at the very beginning. We must not dwell on the failures of the past, the disappointment of the present. One hundred billion humans have labored to place within our own hands the tools required to instantiate our vision. Hyperdrive ...| Casey Handmer's blog
This post is a follow up on my general questions on AI post, and expands on ideas I published here and here in the ancient times. Every time one of the labs releases an updated model I give it a th…| Casey Handmer's blog
This blog is a direct follow up of Starship Is Still Not Understood, and is part of the series on popular misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. I think it is relatively s…| Casey Handmer's blog
This is a brief note about resumes and hiring. At Terraform Industries, I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting recently and it’s helped me crystallize a few ideas I’ve had in this ar…| Casey Handmer's blog
Casey Handmer June 2025 Download a printable PDF. NASA was founded in 1958 in response to Sputnik and the emerging necessity of a robust, government supported space exploration and technology devel…| Casey Handmer's blog
4 posts published by cjhandmer during February 2024| Casey Handmer's blog
Why? We believe that water should be unconditionally abundant. In the face of extended droughts, aspiring for greater usage efficiency is not, by itself, a sufficiently robust solution. The Colorad…| Casey Handmer's blog
While I spend 99% of my time thinking about hardware, synthetic fuels, and the solar industrial revolution, the progress in AI has not gone unnoticed. I’m writing this post not to share any p…| Casey Handmer's blog
The Australian Border Force won’t stop searching me and my personal devices when I visit Australia. Despite being an Australian citizen, under Australian law, I have zero recourse to this continued…| Casey Handmer's blog
[Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.] Three years ago we set out to make cheap synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate that we had kick…| Casey Handmer's blog
The SLS axiomatically cannot provide good value to the US taxpayer. In that regard it has already failed, regardless of whether it eventually manages to limp to orbit with a Falcon Heavy payload or…| Casey Handmer's blog
Some ideas on preventing cryogenic propellant boiloff in Starship during long duration cruise or while operating orbital fuel depots. The usual caveats apply! One of the major concerns with using S…| Casey Handmer's blog
California is by far the richest and most powerful polity led by Progressive ideals, and it has taken a beating of late. In this post, I discuss a practical roadmap by which California must reclaim its mantle as the shining city on the hill, an embodiment of the positive attributes of Progressive ideals and material optimism, and once again become a target of aspirational upward mobility. This will not be an easy road. Decades of complacency have squandered enviable resources and potential. B...| Casey Handmer's blog
As of today, it is 601 days until October 17, 2026, when the mass-optimal launch window to Mars opens next. While I don’t have any privileged information, it’s fun to speculate about what Spa…| Casey Handmer's blog
I received a recent timely reminder that a long-planned blog, this one, I had yet to write. Many many blog spirits lurk in the great beyond waiting for inspiration or structure. Once I understand h…| Casey Handmer's blog
This post is a follow on from Powering the Mars Base. It’s an extended riff on the following thought experiment: What is the most electrical power you could extract from an integrated Starship-deli…| Casey Handmer's blog
[Edit April 2025: I’m excited to learn that Base Power is developing this business model in Texas.] I’ve written more than a few blogs about energy before. Why would I write another? I …| Casey Handmer's blog
I frequently read about proposals for new solar power developments where the resulting power is moved great distances to less sunny places, such as northern Europe from the Sahara, the US North Eas…| Casey Handmer's blog
[One from the archives, a previously unpublished short story I wrote c. 2017 on the theme of BASE jumping.] Why anyone thought a prison on the Moon was a good idea was beyond me. Remote, dangerous,…| Casey Handmer's blog
A quick note to formalize some observations on elite organization dysfunction. The Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center in Florida commemorates the 25 US astronauts who have died in flight…| Casey Handmer's blog
Or, basic surface infrastructure for the Moon and Mars. I’ve written a few blogs about space stuff over the last couple of years but I’m not yet out of ideas. The usual disclaimers appl…| Casey Handmer's blog
I don’t ordinarily write about events “in the moment” but for this I will make an exception, as I was personally affected. Caveats aside, my family and I are safe, we evacuated for several days, an…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier chapters. Google Mars .kml. Literary commentary podcast. [Edit: If you enjoy this kind of thing,…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier chapters. Google Mars .kml. Literary commentary podcast. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year s…| Casey Handmer's blog
President Trump’s recent sweeping electoral victory is a clear mandate for change. There is some urgency, and Trump has assembled the early stages of a team and coalition that can deliver it. It’s …| Casey Handmer's blog
A shorter version of this post was published in Palladium on 10/18/24. This version incorporates helpful feedback from a number of knowledgeable readers. With the recent SpaceX Starship orbit…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. Water, the staff of life. What a shame, then, that the Earth’s Moon always seemed to be so dry! So dry, in fact, that in mo…| Casey Handmer's blog
Recent (March 2019) announcements of new programs to land humans on the moon by 2024 have generated all kinds of responses. This blog is not going to deal with whether it’s a good idea, polit…| Casey Handmer's blog
One of the fun things about speculative technology is encountering people with different views, and then trying to understand why and how, essentially, the same set of axioms leads to a different c…| Casey Handmer's blog
A brief note on using solar and batteries as generic power sources. Over the last few years of work at Terraform Industries, we’ve developed several useful heuristics to understand how rapid …| Casey Handmer's blog
This post is part of the series on space topics. This post is not the last word on this topic. The usual caveats apply. I’m curious if you have strong opinions on different fuel mixes. A grow…| Casey Handmer's blog
Four years ago, unable to find a comprehensive summary of the ongoing abject failure known as the NASA SLS (Space Launch System), I wrote one. If you’re unfamiliar with the topic, you should read i…| Casey Handmer's blog
With the latest studies on GLP-1 drugs showing not just a drop in all-cause mortality but also an apparent slowing of aging, I thought I’d write a quick note on how I think this technology, i…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. Rigor is the underpinning of success when designing any kind of technological application. Throughout my career I have found myself o…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. Humans evolved a rare symbolic reasoning ability during our emergence over the last million or so years. As running apes, we lacked t…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series countering misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. Starlink, SpaceX’s plan to serve internet via tens of thousands of satellites, is a staple in the…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on common misconceptions in space journalism. Now available in audio form. SpaceX has been working on some variant of the Big Falcon Rocket for almost a decade, with a publicly an…| Casey Handmer's blog
As a lover of all things space I enjoy reading a wide variety of perspectives. The more different the origin, the more likely I am to learn something new! Even in articles which contain errors or e…| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of my series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. In my previous blog, Unpopular Opinions In Space, I wrote that while expensive, developing a bigger rocket is often a cheaper and…| Casey Handmer's blog
Last year’s post “You Should be Working on Hardware” was mostly targeted at people with established careers and financial security, but I was surprised to see it enjoyed much wide…| Casey Handmer's blog
Solar is in the process of shearing off the base of the entire global industrial stack – energy – and the tech sector still lacks a unified thesis for how to best enable, accelerate, an…| Casey Handmer's blog
It’s lucky I like solar power because it’s impossible for me to open the X app without seeing insanely great news about solar deployment progress. This progress is driven by consistent …| Casey Handmer's blog
As recently discussed on The Carbon Copy with Brian Janous, utilities are seeing major forecasted demand growth for the first time in decades, and almost entirely from data centers. These data cent…| Casey Handmer's blog
How much ancient text might we recover from the library in the Villa of Papyri in Herculaneum? How much was there to begin with? We know it was a huge luxurious villa filled with exquisite art work…| Casey Handmer's blog
Originally posted on the Terraform blog. At Terraform Industries, we’re making cheap synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. Among the list of the Terraformer’s familiar attributes…| Casey Handmer's blog
This post is a follow on from my blog on optimizing resumes and my blog exhorting people to build more hardware! One part of my job running Terraform Industries is recruiting, so I’m privileg…| Casey Handmer's blog
Mars Helicopter will fly no more. But there is work to be done and Mars helicopters to do it! We should build dozens and then hundreds as serialized standard spacecraft buses and run a global compe…| Casey Handmer's blog
I’ve been putting this one off but no longer. Let’s talk about geoengineering. At Terraform Industries, we’re developing a carbon neutral supply chain for cheap, unlimited hydrocarbons derived only…| Casey Handmer's blog
[Edit May 2024: This concept was republished in Asterisk Magazine.] Just a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles lies the Imperial Valley, home to Palm Springs, some of the most productive agri…| Casey Handmer's blog
[Edit Feb 2025: What a difference a year makes. This piece aged well. The Democratic Party still seems to have zero idea how or why they badly lost the election. Elon is now working full time on a …| Casey Handmer's blog
Originally published at Roots of Progress, based on this thread. Everyone knows the industrial revolution occurred centuries ago and involved steam engines. That was just the warm up. We are now a …| Casey Handmer's blog
This is an elaboration of my submission for the letter detection prize as part of the Vesuvius Challenge in June. It gets technical and esoteric but the first few paragraphs are of general interest…| Casey Handmer's blog
Or, why Elon Musk’s impossible hardware businesses have succeeded. Audio version. “Why should I work on hardware???” I hear you cry. Not because I work on hardware, and I need you…| Casey Handmer's blog
A short and spicy post. There remains, even in 2023, a substantial fraction of the “future of energy” hivemind who are still convinced that the solution to all our problems is to build …| Casey Handmer's blog
Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier chapters. Google Mars .kml. Literary commentary podcast. After the chaos of Festival Night, the …| Casey Handmer's blog
It is with some trepidation that I commence a project long anticipated and oft delayed. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is, in my view, one of the finest works of literature ever composed.…| Casey Handmer's blog
I have Thoughts about city design and traffic congestion, so I will write a blog. In terms of background, I did a bunch of transport economics when I worked at Hyperloop, including building a predi…| Casey Handmer's blog
Cheaper hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com Executive Summary Terraform Industries is a bet on cheap solar, synthetic hydrocarbon supremacy, and hyperscal…| Casey Handmer's blog
Another entry into my blog series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. I discussed this post on The Space Show on November 5 2021. It has been exactly two years since my initial posts …| Casey Handmer's blog
