77th–79th flight of 2026: Ethiopian @flyethiopian ET866+ET716, and @KMMaltaAirlines KM615, from JRO/HTKJ Kilimanjaro via ADD/HAAB Addis Ababa and FCO/LIRF Rome to MLA/LMML Malta. 🇹🇿✈️🇪🇹✈️🇮🇹✈️🇲🇹

The United Republic of Tanzania is the 151st (of 249) country/territory I have visited, or the 118th (of 194) if only counting independent sovereign states. I had @Emirates EK4+EK725 from London to Dar es Salaam. The preceding flight arrived late, and our flight made a detour south of Israel on the way to Dubai due to the military operations in the Gulf. In the end, it arrived 2 hours behind schedule, and I couldn’t catch the connecting flight. They put me on a @flydubai flight with a stopover in Zanzibar instead. These are the 1183rd to 1185th flights of all time and the 73rd to 75th flights of 2026. 🇬🇧✈️🇦🇪✈️🇹🇿

This is part of the reason why this mission is necessary. When this remains the mainstream opinion, we will never become a multiplanetary civilization. True. There are risks. Everything comes with risks. Instead of holding back, we are proactively looking for solutions to mitigate those risks. This is how progress is made. I feel a bit sad when people claim that a crewed flyby has little to no scientific value. They fail to understand that the science of human spaceflight is, in large part, medical science. Despite years of ISS operations, there are still many gaps in our understanding of the impact of spaceflight on the human body. Many of the studies we carried out on fram2 were medical studies. Even though the mission was short, I carefully chose them to help us better understand and prepare for future long-duration deep-space flights. We will do the same on our journey to Mars. A precursor mission before committing to a landing will deepen our knowledge and help answer long-standing questions that ground experiments like Mars-500 could never answer. Doraemon only exists in manga. The Anywhere Door does not belong to our physical world. A nuclear engine will not solve every problem. In the end, we still have to spend months, if not years, in deep space to reach another planet or asteroid. This is orbital mechanics. When you recognize that life is short, the universe is vast, and that making life multiplanetary is inevitable and urgent, the only meaningful answer is: Work. 💪

Now that Starship V3 has made its debut, we are one step closer to making life multiplanetary. During Fram2 training, apart from the usual Dragon-related topics, I remember that what we talked about most in the training room was how to reliably tether down on Phobos. Three months ago, Elon announced that the focus would shift toward the Moon. That makes sense. And I am also excited to see that, with AI data centers, we may eventually find a way to make space commercially practical. So why am I setting my sights on Mars rather than the Moon? Because I believe that even without private investment in lunar flights, we will still reach the Moon, and likely very soon. As competition between the United States and China intensifies, governments will turn lunar bases into reality. And I am happy to sit back and watch that happen. On the other hand, I have no confidence that Mars will still happen within our lifetime. And I think I should do something about that. I hope that by purchasing a flyby mission to Mars, SpaceX will have another reason not to forget about Mars. Because we seriously shouldn’t defer Mars to our next generation. Although this mission will not make a tether down on Phobos, everything has to begin with a first step. We had Mariner 4 and 9 before the Vikings, and today’s Curiosity and Perseverance. I hope this mission can show the public that Mars is not just a point of light in a telescope. It is a real place, and humans can fly there and come back alive and come back healthy.

53rd flight of 2026: Stellaer 212 Flight EIX22X from Dublin Weston to London Luton. Pilatus PC-12 NGX registered EJ-VAIS. This is the 1163rd flight of all time. 🇮🇪✈️🇬🇧

Consensus isn't a document. It's a decision miners make under pressure, in real time. 13 blocks behind on an invalid fork. Caught up. Reorged back to valid. This is what the job looks like on a quiet Saturday