To the Moon and back

To be honest, when I first heard about the Artemis II mission, I was like: the US is going back to the Moon? Under TRUMP? Astonishingly, the whole thing actually did begin under his aegis in 2017, when the first proposals were made, but it didn’t actually really get going until 2022 when the first unmanned Artemis mission took off under Biden. Then the manned second mission also began under Biden, who was probably expecting to still be the president when it actually happened. That’s kind of why I’m surprised Trump didn’t cancel it; apart from all the other things he’s demanded an end to, this was something that Biden could claim credit for, and I couldn’t imagine him tolerating that.

But—despite all that, Artemis II went up and returned safely to Earth. I was holding off writing about it until it did that, which it did earlier today… it set a number of milestones along the way, most notably the four people on board travelled further away from the Earth than anyone has before (as well as being the first people to do so in over half a century), but I think the fact that it happened at all is the amazing thing. Artemis II went to the Moon and came back. It proved NASA could pull it off. It almost feels like a fuck you to Edolf, doesn’t it? “Look at that, we managed the job without blowing up on the launch pad”…

I saw that online, and it’s an… inelegant way of putting it, but there’s so much truth in it. Because the important thing about Artemis II is that it worked. A US government body—part of THIS particular US government, lest we forget—carried out a major operation for the benefit of science, sending four people into space as far as the Moon for the first time in over half a century, then bringing them back to Earth (good thing there was still an Earth for them to return to, eh); not only was it a useful thing, it was a successful one. A US government body got something RIGHT. And I don’t think people expect that now, especially not from the current mob. We are starved for this sort of competency in recent years, at least when it comes to things that aren’t evil.

And I don’t know what it all cost, but I have seen complaints about the no doubt vast amounts of money being spent on it rather than on things like healthcare. And I mean… Trump was never going to spend that money on healthcare or anything good for the American people in the first place, but also none of that money got spent on anything bad either. It didn’t blow up schools and so forth in Iran, for example. And yeah, obviously America should be putting itself in order and there are other, higher priorities… but that money was going to be spent on something. Better going on something that adds to science and knowledge rather than takes away from life, something actually good and useful at a time where we can no longer count on the US to do that sort of thing.

As a final thing, here’s Hank Green: