Moonbraker

Summary

Moonbraker follows an overloaded software team as its CEO declares that they are going to the moon. Questions about capacity, equipment and priorities become implementation details, while a PM consultant enthusiastically requests an ETA. By the end, the ambition belongs to leadership and the problem belongs to engineering.

The satire targets the gap between announcing a destination and providing the means to reach it. The final panels turn that impossible assignment into a corporate origin myth—and offer the next billionaire a shortcut to Mars. This is a fictional workplace story, not a historical account of the Apollo program.

Transcript

• Panel 1 — CEO: I have this brilliant idea! Wait for it... WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON!!
• Panel 2 — Engineer: Sir, we’re an overqualified and understaffed team of software developers already overloaded with impossible projects. How could we find the time and resources to build a spaceship, spacesuits and space toilets capable of leaving Earth’s orbit and landing on another celestial body?
• Panel 3 — CEO: That’s an implementation detail. I’m your boss and I’ve made my decision. My job is the ideation of brilliant ideas. You just go do it. I’m paying you to do stuff—am I not?
• Panel 4 — PM Consultant: What a brilliant idea, sir. I’ll get an ETA from engineering so we can shift left on this in a durable fashion, with maximum synergy effect.
• Panel 5 — Engineer: So you’re committing to creating a space program, presumably with the same top priority as all the other top-priority projects we’re working on?
• Panel 6 — PM Consultant: Of course not. YOU are. The big boss is saying: ‘I’m giving you a problem to solve. I don’t care how you solve it. Team, figure it out. It’s your problem now. Go find me a solution.’
• Panel 7 — Narration: And that was the story of the Moon Landing. Some people think we faked it and never even left orbit, but it was real—every step of the way. We did the impossible. That is why people who don’t believe in miracles doubt us.
• Panel 8 — The moral: Nothing is impossible, given the right combination of insane imagination, narcissism, ingenuity, resources, funding... and blind faith.
• Panel 9 — Engineer: If you’re a billionaire reading this (you are, aren’t you), then I know a shortcut to Mars...