alt.hn

7/30/2026 at 1:21:34 PM

Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5

 https://www.projectpluto.com/25010d.htm

by ryannevius

7/30/2026 at 3:00:35 PM

I love this page. Text, photos, links. Straight up HTML 4, maybe even using a template in a text editor and FTPed to go live. I didn't see any inline or referenced CSS. No scripts. No ads. No social junk. The home page even has a <table> just like it's 1994.

What are the drawbacks to reverting to this type web publishing? That's how I used to do things before publishing tools and CMS and platforms took over, but I know the security landscape has changed quite a bit, and such pages are always in the deep long tail of Google results (and therefore practically invisible to AI summaries, which often surface complete junk as sources).

by ilamont

7/30/2026 at 9:10:41 PM

It highlighted something that I hadn't realised had been impacting me. The latency of the modern web.

There are a lot of hyperlinks on there and clicking around on various related articles was near instantaneous. It actually made navigation very useful and not feel like a burden. I will take that over any visual flair any day.

by ColdStream

7/30/2026 at 3:42:10 PM

The main drawback with the page's unstyled design is that the page is not mobile friendly.

Publishing web pages by manually editing HTML files is still very common today; any GitHub Pages blog does this.

by sheept

7/30/2026 at 3:51:59 PM

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> is the only thing keeping this page from being mobile friendly.

Having that not be the browser default was a good idea in 2008, but not now.

by xnx

7/30/2026 at 4:04:50 PM

It wasn't a good idea even in 2008.

by account42

7/30/2026 at 5:15:41 PM

I don't have a smartphone to test on. What happens without this?

by zahlman

7/30/2026 at 5:20:04 PM

You essentially see the desktop version zoomed out by default with tiny text. You need to zoom in, but the line length is still desktop sized so you need to scroll left and right as well as up and down to read it.

by oakesm9

7/30/2026 at 6:08:39 PM

In this pages case, I disagree. I feel like when pages try to force their 'aspect ratio / styling' to fit the view port I have to fight more with it. at least as it stands I can zoom as needed on this page, I can appreciate the web devs 'vision' as in how it probably appeared on their machine. I honestly hate mobile sites unless they are done just super super well which is harder than expected. https://rockauto.com is one such site that I think works really well on mobile.

by jdironman

7/30/2026 at 8:17:57 PM

A page like this, with minimal styling, the whole point is the author does not care, the author expects the user's agent to style the document optimally for it's dimensions., the optimal in responsive design. this was the original vision for the web, the agent supplies most of the style.

Except it does not, for some weird reason unstyled pages like this which should look great on mobile look like ass. Why are mobile browsers defaults so wrong?

This hits hard because this is how I build my pages (you can probably tell I am not a front end designer) I just want to put well structured content out and let the users agent display it in the manner that suits the user best. And it mostly works, it will not win any awards but it looks fine. Until someone asks why it looks like the dog's breakfast on mobile.

by somat

7/30/2026 at 6:28:31 PM

> not mobile friendly.

It’s not what I’d call mobile unfriendly either.

I had to zoom in slightly but then it’s perfectly readable in landscape.

Some very basic inline responsive CSS would make it work great in portrait too.

But the thing is, with no ads, complex layout, or other bullshit, it’s perfectly usable on mobile as is.

I’d certainly take this over any website from any major media outlet, other than those that are publicly funded like the BBC (and, even then, only in the UK because they show ads everywhere else).

by bartread

7/30/2026 at 3:49:22 PM

It's obviously not designed for mobile but I wouldn't call it unfriendly, it's still fast and pretty easy to read. It also works perfectly with Firefox reader mode.

by burkaman

7/30/2026 at 4:43:25 PM

This sounds like a critique of mobile browsers. Make friendliness the default!

by recursive

7/30/2026 at 8:32:02 PM

I read it on a mobile device and found it perfectly legible. I like small text though.

by gavinsyancey

7/30/2026 at 3:50:31 PM

Firefox's reader mode works really well on the article, I wonder why it's not the default for unstyled pages.

by Krssst

7/30/2026 at 6:25:24 PM

I kinda think it's more mobile friendly than desktop friendly (although it isn't great on either.)

It's sorta hard to read text that spans the whole screen and at least on mobile, that's not nearly as wide.

by RandallBrown

7/30/2026 at 5:13:21 PM

What part of this is actually not mobile friendly? I’d argue this is laid out pretty well compared to some websites that are “mobile friendly” but load poorly or make it impossible to scroll.

by childofhedgehog

7/30/2026 at 6:12:43 PM

If you need to scroll the viewport left and right to read a line of text, that seems kind of unfriendly.

by recursive

7/30/2026 at 8:05:12 PM

> The main drawback with the page's unstyled design is that the page is not mobile friendly.

Then fix mobile browsers to display it correctly.

by ErroneousBosh

7/30/2026 at 5:56:31 PM

I used reading mode on Safari and it was perfect for reading.

by jonathanlydall

7/30/2026 at 4:09:12 PM

That's a feature for me, not a bug. Not everything has to be everything-friendly all the time, especially if it makes it easier to consume content or stuff.

Edit: I'm forgetting about certain accessibility issues, although I'm not sure this plain page isn't a good fit for accessibility tools.

by barbazoo

7/30/2026 at 5:14:18 PM

We get submissions like this fairly commonly (we also get ones that are "modern" but use hand-crafted CSS, use only un-minified first-party-written JS for progressive enhancement, etc.). But a large fraction of them are about the style as well as exhibiting it.

The main drawback seems to be that larger communities than HN will, at best, not care.

by zahlman

7/30/2026 at 4:06:36 PM

And it's so fast even with pictures. I miss the old internet.

by barbazoo

7/30/2026 at 4:34:03 PM

You could easily make a browser extension that passes each page through an AI agent that will rewrite the page in the given style. It’s fun.

by deadbabe

7/30/2026 at 3:51:01 PM

> Over 600 Falcon 9 rockets have been launched. Most of the upper stages are either in orbits close to the earth or have already re-entered the earth's atmosphere. A few are orbiting the sun. The object that will be hitting the moon has been orbiting the earth for a little over a year.

by sixtyj

7/30/2026 at 3:57:25 PM

[flagged]

by isodev

7/30/2026 at 4:00:55 PM

[flagged]

by holoduke

7/30/2026 at 4:47:52 PM

After so much time hearing about how SpaceX dumps rocket debris all over Boca Chica it's kind of amusing that they're also leaving trash on the moon. It would be cool if we sent people back to the moon one day and they took photos next to junk like this. Or whatever is left of it.

by dopamean

7/30/2026 at 5:18:40 PM

There is not much rocket debris in Boca Chica. If you do find something sell it on ebay.

by ralfd

7/30/2026 at 4:57:15 PM

You realize we've been smashing shit into the moon since Apollo right?

Also you know the literal trash bags of trash and poop that Apollo dumped overboard.

This smashing into the the moon will leave a random crater, and last time I checked, lots of craters on the moon.

by tekla

7/30/2026 at 4:55:31 PM

Soon we'll need to call Roger Wilco to take care of all this junk.

by glimshe

7/30/2026 at 3:55:44 PM

something they didn't mention, what is in this upper stage? I'm presuming a rocket motor and some fuel is that right..? They do a calculation of energy release on impact, but I'm wondering if there is any fuel left and whether that would affect their equation?

by clort

7/30/2026 at 7:12:23 PM

Like most upper stages, Falcon 9 makes itself inert after a mission by venting any remaining propellant. Otherwise there's a risk that propellant could boil off, increasing pressure until the tank explodes, creating a debris cloud. Since pretty much any collision in space is catastrophic, it's easier to track and avoid one large piece of debris rather than a bunch of small ones.

by ggreer

7/30/2026 at 4:47:08 PM

I can't really think of much besides maybe some batteries. The fuel and oxidizer are supposed to be dumped shortly after payload deployment to prevent any issues with blowing up. Even if it wasn't dumped, its been a year, so it would have boiled off.

by tekla

7/30/2026 at 4:53:08 PM

someone send them a littering bill

sadly one day hundreds of years from now parts of the moon will look like all the garbage left on Everest (and maybe even the dead frozen bodies too, moon dust is sticky and very sharp apparently)

by ck2

7/30/2026 at 6:06:38 PM

The moon is a lifeless rock with nobody on it. That seems like a better place for garbage to go than the earth. And since it's going to impact the moon at 2.43km/sec, I don't think there will be much visible stuff remaining, just a crater and some bits of aluminum.

Also what's the alternative? Moon missions don't have enough extra propellant to go back to earth and deorbit. They might have enough to move to a relatively stable orbit, but then it's just long-lived orbital debris.

by ggreer

7/30/2026 at 5:29:56 PM

That's the neat thing. Dumping on the moon or anywhere (other than Earth) isn't possible, as the litter is infinitely more valuable than the existing dust and rock. It's as if someone was dumping gold bricks into your yard. You really wouldn't mind at all, and would ask for more. The only exception would be radioactive waste, as that is less valuable than the surrounding dust and rock.

by 1970-01-01

7/30/2026 at 7:43:01 PM

[flagged]

by joering2

7/30/2026 at 5:06:53 PM

> though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of.

My thoughts exactly.

by tempodox