We’re Heading Back To The Moon And I’m Excited About It, Cynicism Be Damned

For the first time since 1972, human beings will visit the moon. Well, visit near the moon, because this Artemis II mission, set to launch today during a window starting at 6:24 pm Eastern time, is just one that will go around the moon without landing, making it the fourth time such a trip has happened. It’s preceded by Apollo 8, a test run that went into lunar orbit, then Apollo 10, a full “dress rehearsal” around the moon before the first landing with Apollo 11, and then Apollo 13, which famously had a near-disaster and wasn’t able to land, but looped around the moon.

Even if we’ve sort of done this before, it’s significant how we’re doing it again. For one thing, this is an all-new spacecraft, Orion, which will carry four astronauts instead of three, and the first woman to go on such a mission. Also, the space toilet on Orion is vastly better than the awful stick-on-your-butt bags of the Apollo missions, and the Orion capsules can be re-used.

The Artemis II mission will also be the furthest from Earth that human beings have ever traveled, with its trajectory set to take this quartet of astronauts 250,000 to 252,800 miles away from home, beating the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles.

And, more importantly, this mission inaugurates what I hope will be a return to regular human space exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Orion is a very different spacecraft than Apollo, full of new technologies, and represents a new generation of spacecraft capable of going beyond the Earth. I’m very curious to hear about how it performs.

The Artemis program has had its share of delays and setbacks; some argue that the SLS (Space Launch System) launch vehicle was hamstrung because of the demands that it re-purpose Shuttle Program components, but the end result is a rocket that is the most powerful ever human-rated launch vehicle, making 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, which is almost a million more than what the legendary Saturn V moon rocket made in the Apollo era.

NASA has some live feeds available to watch the launch, which I recommend you do! Here, I’ll embed the feed for you, make it nice and easy:

Look, I know many of us have some pretty conflicted and complicated feelings about our country, the world, hell, humanity in general. I feel it, too. But despite it all, despite the inanity and stupidity and callowness and cruelty and madness we are confronted with every day, humans are still, deep down, absolutely incredible.

People, people like you and I, have given the world stunning works of art and pieces of music that fill us with emotion, movies we can’t forget, sandwiches we still reminisce about, inside jokes that make us crack up in the middle of a shower, cars that we love, kisses and adventures and novels and desserts and conversations and days in the mountains and held hands and spit takes and slaps and looking at stars and on and on and on.

And some of these people are smart. So smart that they got together and built a fucking rocket to go to the moon, just because something deep inside us pushes us to do these kinds of crazy things, to learn and discover and wonder and learn some more.

So, yeah, I’m fucking excited we’re going back to the moon. I don’t care if you think SpaceX could have done it better or that there are other problems in the world, because of course there are. Today, I don’t care about the idiots in power or their bad ideas, or all of the shitty things they’re doing, because some other people are going to try to go to the moon today.

Godspeed.