Video Fridays: Artemis II - Humanity Returns to the Moon

I love Space stuff. I’ve loved watching and learning about all things NASA since watching the launches going back to Gemini and Apollo missions in the 1960s. The image on my phone’s lock screen is from the 1965 rendezvous between the Gemini VI and VII spacecraft.

I made a giant scrapbook with newspaper clippings in 1969 during the Apollo missions and loved everything NASA. When I moved to Florida in 2008 to teach at Full Sail University, one of the first things I did was go see a Space Shuttle launch live at Kennedy Space Center and dragged a co-worker and his wife to watch with me. I eventually got a group to come out to the space coast to watch the remaining shuttle launches and I was lucky enough to watch the first launch of the Orion capsule on top of a Delta IV-heavy for the EFT-1 launch on December 5, 2014.

But it wasn’t enough to just watch launches and cheer from the side. In 2020 I decided to put my money where my mouth had been and filled out an application to become an astronaut. There was absolutely no reason for me to imagine that they would call me up and add me to the astronaut corp. I didn’t have to correct college degrees or experiences with engineering, science or aeronautics, my health was more than a bit suspect and I was over the age of 60. I probably should have worked toward this goal 40-years earlier. But what the hell, only way to guarantee failure is to not try. So I filled the damn application out and then waited. I didn’t hear back from NASA until January 2021 saying that because of COVID and the overwhelming number of applications, they were still working through the list and should have candidate letters out by the end of the year or early 2022. Yeah, I saw the photo of the new class of astronaut candidates in December of 2021 and go my “Thank you for applying” email a couple days later.

All of this to say that I have very strong emotions about wanting to see the success of NASA and robotic and human space flights. For me, it shows what we’re capable of accomplishing when we work together, pool our resources and are driven to solve what some imagine to be impossible problems. At the same time, I understand that we don’t have a space program if it weren’t for the Russians trying to prove that theirs was a better political system and since then how resources were allocated was often limited to how well a senator or congress member could see how it would benefit their district or political power. And now that we’ve entered the era when billionaires have taken control, it can be difficult to see how any of this is benefitting “all mankind.”

I watched the launch on April 1st and I spent all day Monday with the NASA feed onscreen for most of the 10-hours that they were working as the flew around the other side of the moon. It was refreshing to hear the banter between the ground controllers and scientists and the astronauts as they recorded images and gathered information about areas on the moon that no human eyes had ever seen or recorded. They were doing science and working in teams, for the whole day. No chest pounding, no “look at us/aren’t we great,” just gathering data and loving the opportunity to be a part of this amazing mission and adventure.

It had been awhile since I’d experienced professionals doing their job and not PR people selling something. I really liked it. But I knew that sooner or later the snake would enter the garden and demand all the attention and worship. And sure enough at the very end of a very long day, they set up cameras in the Orion capsule for a new conference and the first person on the line was the president of the United State and the intelligence of the conversation dropped noticeably (including several minutes of dead-air…) and the level of sycophancy went through the roof. Even the Canadian astronaut had to offer thanks, like the president could have pulled his seat if he wanted to. Ugh. For all mankind, my ass.

I still think that this crew and this mission does represent what we can accomplish when we work together and get the job done and I hope that we do get the next two missions, leading to the moon landing for the fourth mission. I don’t know how they’re gong to get it done with the budget slashes and DOGE idiocy up top. But I’m encouraged by this mission and knowing about the smaller commercial groups who are landing vehicles on the moon and continuing to get things done. I still have hope. Below is the shorter crew news conference from April 8th. If you want to put on the 10-hour broadcast of the crew flying around the moon from April 6th as a background video, click HERE.