1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack

Real Weight Loss With Deadprogrammer, Fair and Balanced

I’ve been working late and on weekends, but I still try to run with a Polar heart rate thingy almost every day. These workouts in the Newscorp gym make me feel “fair and balanced” all over. I started stretching out more, but I still can’t run for longer than an hour at 4 mph because my right knee starts to hurt. says that I am a wuss, but I am not going to listen to him.

I haven’t seen much weight loss (3 or 4 lb at most) since I started running, and that’s a bit surprising. I am still on the Atkins diet too, so that’s doubly surprising. I am trying a new strategery though: a heavy low carb breakfast, a salad for lunch and nothing for dinner. That should work.

The gym that Rupert built is amazing. All machines in it have a very nice usability feature: all adjustable handles, pins and levers are color coded yellow. Steve Krug would have loved it. The treadmills can link up to a wireless Polar heart rate monitor strap. Supposedly all of those machines can work with a special chip thingy which would record your workout stats. I am going to look into getting one of those.

1972 Soviet postage stamp commemorating the Mars 2 probe

worth a read

Mars For The Rest of Us — a weekly-or-more deep dive on the technical side of Mars exploration: rocket propulsion, microbiology, mission architecture, and everything in between. Written by Maciej Ceglowski.

Read it on Substack