Quillette

2 days ago | quillette.com | Peter Hague

Starship recently conducted its ninth test flight. On the previous two test flights, the upper stage vehicle was destroyed during ascent, but this one fared better. However, the booster was destroyed during its landing burn while attempting a soft landing in the ocean, and the ship lost attitude control in space and was not able to complete its test objectives. There will be more test flights, and likely more failures before the rocket works well enough for use.

1 week ago | quillette.com | Michael Rosen

A review of On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilizationby Douglas Murray, 240 pages, Broadside Books (April 2025)On 21 May, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were shot dead in Washington, DC, less than a mile from the US Capitol, apparently by a radical anti-Israel activist.

2 weeks ago | quillette.com | Lawrence Krauss

Elon Musk wants to create a permanent human colony on Mars. He has recently announced plans to land the first human on the Red Planet within this decade, with the view to establishing a million-strong Martian colony within 20–30 years. This plan is logistically ludicrous, strategically ill advised, and scientifically and politically divisive and dangerous. Musk is utilising his vast fortune to try to reshape human destiny.

3 weeks ago | quillette.com | Jonathan Kay

What follows is the twenty-sixth instalment of The Nations of Canada, a serialised Quillette project adapted from Greg Koabel’s ongoing podcast of the same name. In our last instalment, we looked at how France began rebuilding its colonies in Quebec and Acadia, territories that had been temporarily occupied by English and Scottish interlopers during the Anglo-French War of 1627–29. This time, we’ll be looking at this period from the perspective of France’s Indigenous allies in the region.

3 weeks ago | quillette.com | Claire Lehmann

This article was originally published at The Dispatch on May 9, 2025. Read it here. An outbreak of measles—a disease once declared eliminated in the US—has hospitalised 91 people in Texas, killing two unvaccinated school-aged children. It is a horrific disease: In severe cases, a child’s immune system collapses, and they suffer seizures and brain damage from encephalitis or drown as fluid fills their lungs. And any outbreak of measles is entirely preventable.