The tree · Regime · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 5 to 20 years
A crewed lunar program, government or commercial, keeps flying across two changes of its principal backer
Every large space program since Apollo has been redrawn or cancelled when the people paying for it changed: a new administration for a government program, a new owner or lead funder for a company's. A program that keeps its money and keeps flying crewed hardware across two such changes has become an institution rather than one backer's project, which is what a multi-decade build on the Moon needs. Any nation's or company's crewed lunar program counts, because lunar material at scale can come from anyone's program; the US program is the one to watch first. It gates the Slow Expanse through lunar material at scale.
The test: what counts as it having happened
A crewed lunar program, government or commercial, receives its funding and flies crewed hardware under each of two successive principal backers after the one backing it when it first flew crew. The principal backer is whoever supplies the largest share of the program's money: for a government program, or a company program whose largest customer is a government, a change of backer is a change in that government's head of government; for a company program funded mainly by private money, it is a change in which private party supplies the largest share (a new controlling owner or a new lead funder). A program that is cancelled and later restarted, or a different program that reaches the mark, resolves the node when it gets there.
Settled by: The funding government's budget records or the company's public filings, and the program's flight record
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 78% | 82% | 87% | 91% | 93% |
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 2026-09-25.
Why these numbers: Re-estimated 2026-09-25 against the widened criterion, proposed by Claude and accepted by John 2026-10-02. The government route carries almost all of it, as it did at 0.75 by 2071: two rival national programs and forty-five years make it likely some crewed lunar program becomes an institution. The commercial route adds a little, since a company program whose owner or lead funder changes twice and keeps flying crew also counts now, but a founder-funded program can fly for decades without a change of backer, so it adds attempts rather than certainty.
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 0.5% (too small to tell apart from chance). 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 | 0.5% | 1.3% | 3.6% | 11% | 16% |
| 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.
The last check
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.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No change of head of government occurred; Congress passed a continuing resolution through 2026-12-11 keeping Artemis funded, which is not a backer change.
Notes
Added 2026-09-25 as the replacement for R-crewed-lunar-program-outlives-two-changes-of-president under candidate 3 of docs/proposal-function-over-route-2026-09-25.md, approved by John 2026-09-25. What lunar material at scale takes from this step is a lunar program that lasts, and a commercial program that outlives its backers supplies that as well as a government one. The old node carried published numbers, so under docs/methodology.md it is retired and replaced rather than renamed in place; its record is kept.
Think this is wrong, missing something it depends on, or badly estimated?
Open an issue about it, or read
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The record itself is data/R-regime.toml in the public repository.