The tree · Launch · Happens to the world · Plays out over the whole window
A hundred tonnes of material dug or made on the Moon are delivered to orbit in one year
The lunar-supply and materials node of the habitat branch. Lifting mass from the Moon takes a twentieth of the energy of lifting it from Earth, so once mining, refining, and a way up (rockets burning lunar oxygen, or an electromagnetic launcher) exist, the Moon becomes the quarry for everything built in space. A hundred tonnes a year is the scale at which a habitat or a propellant depot can be fed from the Moon rather than from Earth.
The test: what counts as it having happened
In one calendar year, at least one hundred tonnes of net mass of lunar origin (loose surface rock and dust, oxygen, water, metal, or products made from them, excluding any Earth-supplied content and counting the same material once) are delivered to lunar or Earth orbit and received and used by a customer there, reported by the operator with independent confirmation.
Settled by: The operator's public accounting, confirmed by the customer or an agency
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55% | 70% | 85% | 92% | 94% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 19th, 2026.
Why these numbers: Given power, people, political continuity and a first tonne of lunar propellant already fired, a hundred tonnes a year is cadence rather than a breakthrough; what keeps it under two in three by 2071 is a buyer in orbit. The first estimate was written as if the dependencies were still uncertain, and with the propellant leaf now a dependency the conditional rises again rather than counting that difficulty twice.
What this one is worth
If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.6% (+0.1 points). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.0% (−0.5 points).
| Longevity scenario | baseline2071 ± 8 | moderate2080 | strong2095 | radical2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The headline as it stands | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled yes now | 0.6% | 1.6% | 4.5% | 12% | 17% |
| If this settled no now | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the
ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a
reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run
2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and
playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per
scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about
0.10 points is inside the noise rather than
a finding.
What the ledger says about this step
- Nine steps were added to the tree, seven of them new requirements on the chain, which is most of why the headline fell in this run 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed
- A hundred tonnes of lunar material a year, given power, people and political continuity, was raised: at that point it is cadence, not a breakthrough 2026-09-20 Changed my mind
The last 3 checks
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
-
2026-11-01 Nothing new
Only ground prototypes (NASA carbothermal, Blue Origin reactor) and plans such as ESA's October 21st, 2026 Lunavest market study surfaced. No lunar material has been delivered to orbit.
-
2026-10-04 Nothing new
No lunar material has been delivered to orbit in any quantity; activity is ground prototypes (NASA solar carbothermal demo in May 2026, Interlune's excavator prototype) and contracts for later this decade.
-
2026-09-19 Nothing new
No evidence of lunar-origin material delivered to orbit at scale in the five-week window; lunar resource extraction remains at small-contract, technology-development stage.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-19 | resolution | 'material originating on the Moon ... delivered ... and used there' | net mass of lunar origin, excluding any Earth-supplied content, counted once, received and used by a customer in orbit | Step 27 outside-model review, item 60 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): a tank of lunar oxygen with Earth-made hardware, or the same material shuttled twice, would otherwise have counted; independent confirmation was already required. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-19 | depends_on | the crewed lander, the lunar reactor and the durable lunar programme | the same three plus L-propellant-produced-off-earth-and-fired-in-a-thruster | Step 27 outside-model review, items 11 and 53 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): the tree jumped from a reactor to a hundred tonnes a year; a first tonne of lunar propellant fired is the rung between. Astra's hundred-tonnes-produced node was declined as covered by this node's own hundred tonnes. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-19 | probability | 0.35 / 0.50 / 0.70 / 0.85 / 0.90 | 0.55 / 0.70 / 0.85 / 0.92 / 0.94 | Step 27 outside-model review, item 16 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): given power, transport and political continuity, a hundred tonnes is cadence, not a breakthrough, and the new propellant leaf takes the first-tonne difficulty out of this conditional (the double-counting note from item 53 applied). Decided September 19th, 2026. |
| 2026-09-25 | depends_on | E-fission-reactor-runs-on-lunar-surface | E-power-through-the-lunar-night-at-a-surface-site | Candidate 1 of docs/proposal-function-over-route-2026-09-25.md, I approved September 25th, 2026: what mining at scale takes from the reactor is power through the lunar night, and solar with storage at a polar site or power sent down from orbit would serve as well. The reactor is now one of three routes under the function step. The numbers stand: they were set given power, and the step from a forty-kilowatt demonstration to a hundred kilowatts at one site is priced on the function step. |
| 2026-09-25 | depends_on | R-crewed-lunar-program-outlives-two-changes-of-president | R-crewed-lunar-program-outlives-two-changes-of-backer | Candidate 3 of docs/proposal-function-over-route-2026-09-25.md, I approved September 25th, 2026: the lunar-program step widened to a program, government or commercial, that keeps flying across two changes of its principal backer, and the old step was retired in its favour. Numbers unchanged. |
Notes
Edges drawn at step 7 (September 8th, 2026): mining at scale needs surface power through the lunar night, and a decade of lunar work needs the program to outlive elections. Step 27, item 61 (September 19th, 2026, declined): the reactor edge stayed because every current lunar programme plans one and a two-week night on batteries at scale is not demonstrated; solar with storage was logged here for revisit. Revisited September 25th, 2026 under the function-over-route rule: the edge now points at E-power-through-the-lunar-night-at-a-surface-site, with the reactor, polar solar with storage, and power from orbit as its routes. The programme edge is nation-agnostic, and since September 25th, 2026 counts a commercial programme too; the people edge stays because a hundred tonnes a year needs maintenance crews.
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The record itself is data/L-launch.toml in the public repository.