The tree · Launch · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 1 to 5 years
Ten tonnes of cryogenic propellant are kept in orbit for six months and then burned
Refilling ships in space has two halves: pumping propellant across, and keeping it cold for long enough to be there when the ship needs it. Liquid oxygen and methane boil away in sunlight, and nobody has kept tonnes of them in orbit for months. Storage proven by use, a depot's worth kept for half a year and then actually burned, is the unproven half of every architecture that sends people beyond low Earth orbit on refilled ships.
The test: what counts as it having happened
At least ten tonnes of cryogenic propellant (liquid oxygen, methane, or hydrogen) are held in orbit aboard one vehicle or depot for at least six months with less than five percent of the starting mass lost to boil-off, measured and reported by the operator, and the stored propellant is subsequently used in an engine burn, confirmed by the operator and independent tracking of the burn.
Settled by: The operator's mission record and independent tracking
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80% | 85% | 90% | 95% | 96% |
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 20th, 2026.
Why these numbers: Zero-boil-off hardware has been ground-tested for years and long-duration storage flights are on the manifest of the lunar programme, so the first six-month demonstration is a matter of a decade or so; the residual is that architectures move to fast tanker cadence instead of long storage and nobody bothers to prove six months. Proposed by Claude September 20th, 2026 with the node's addition, I accepted.
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% | 4.0% | 11% | 15% |
| 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 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.
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2026-11-01 Nothing new
No in-orbit multi-month boil-off result found. A October 20th, 2026 article restates that NASA's plan needs a long-duration boil-off demonstration before a 2028 landing, which is a plan.
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2026-10-25 Nothing new
No ten-tonne, six-month cryogenic storage flight exists. LOXSAT-1, a 100 litre liquid oxygen test planned for nine months, was listed no earlier than July 17th, 2026 and no launch or result was found.
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2026-10-18 Nothing new
No ten-tonne, six-month cryogenic storage flight exists. LOXSAT-1, a 100 litre liquid oxygen test planned for nine months, was listed no earlier than July 17th, 2026 and no launch or result was found in the search results.
Notes
Added September 20th, 2026 under step 27, items 10 and 52 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md, decided September 19th, 2026): Gemini's leaf with Astra's 'and subsequently used in a burn' added, so the node is storage proven by use; Astra's hundred-tonne scale stays with L-orbital-propellant-transfer-at-scale, which this node gates.
Think this estimate is wrong?
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what happens next.
The record itself is data/L-launch.toml in the public repository.