The astronauts of Artemis II have captured our collective imagination. Four astronauts broke the barrier between Earth and space and over 10 days they have traveled farther from the Earth than any human beings have ever gone, and now they're coming home again to tell us about it.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen took off for a flight around the moon, something that had not been attempted since the Apollo13 mission was forced to do so after a ship malfunction. This time it was intentional.
This amazing feat of engineering, exploration, and human spirit is galvanizing, it's a white pill for all of us who see humanity as a race of dreamers. Sure, we're imperfect, but look at what we can pull off with a little ingenuity and one hell of a lot of moxie!
This mission is big enough and daring enough to give us all hope in the future of our species. While political antagonism and petty identitarian squabbles seek to bring us to our knees, the astronauts of Artemis II uplift us—and lift us higher than many of us ever thought we would go again.
https://rumble.com/v78adku-libby-emmons-on-how-awesome-artemis-ii-is.html
So why do so many pundits and talking heads seek to squash the impact of Artemis II? Writing in The Guardian, Zoe Williams said "Let's stop going into space. There's nothing to see and no one to talk to." And that was just the title. Her opening sentence was a gut punch to anyone who sees our mission as human beings to find out everything we can know about life, the universe, and everything.
"It is absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes," she said. She went on to say "There's nothing out there except planets infinitely less beautiful than this one we live on." Of course, she says this without knowing at all if that's true, and without any consideration for what innovation space exploration holds.
"All that seems pretty uncontroversial," she writes, "and I almost never mention it, except for when astronauts yet again pointlessly go into space, as with the latest moon mission." She may think it's pointless, but that's because she has the wrong goals. She concludes with "Seriously, Nasa, can you not just knock it off? Hasn’t the US, of all nations, got bigger things to worry about?"
That's entirely the wrong perspective. What bigger things? What is bigger than space? Solving social issues? Fixing homelessness? Dealing with the national debt? Wars? No, none of this is "bigger," none of this is more important, and certainly none of those things is more essential to the stuff of life than imagination, dreams, and curiosity.
Melissa Chen quipped: "Women will say sh*t like this and then wonder why the entire planet and every major religion has imposed strict social restrictions on their sovereignty since the dawn or time and in every place humans have ever lived." And yeah, I get that take. It is often women who poo-poo the apparent extravagance of achieving dreams—all while lecturing students on the importance of following their dreams.
To me, women like Zoe Williams have no imagination. We go to space because we humans are a race of explorers. Because we can. Because it is there. And because we dream. Let us dream, Zoe, for God's sake just let us dream.
But no, she can't, she has to complain that there's something of greater significance to human kind than thinking our thoughts deep into the broad expanse of space and letting them fly.
And Williams is not the only one. Ars Technica complains that the Artemis II mission didn't "tell us anything new." The outlet complains that the whole point of the trip was the public relations value.
Which is the sour grapes way of saying that mission told us that we can, in fact, do this. Ideally, Artemis II inspires a whole new generation of astronauts who bring their faith, their hopes, their dreams, and their know-how into the great beyond. Our dreams should soar as far into the unknown as we can dream them.
That's how we know who we are. We dream, we tell each other about our dreams, then we dream the biggest dreams we can dream together.
Pilot Victor Glover said it absolutely better than anyone else could have. As he floated in a tin can far above the blue earth, he said "And as we are so far from Earth and looking at the beauty of creation, I think that for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here is I can really see Earth as one thing."
"And when I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us whoever created it, you have this amazing place, this spaceship, you guys are talking to us because we're in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you're on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos," he went on.
"Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we're doing is special, but we're the same distance from you, and I'm trying to tell you, just, trust me, you are special in all of this emptiness. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe.
"You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we got to get through this together."
If it takes going to space to feel that truth, to believe it, to express it, then there is no expense, no hassle, no difficulty, no problem that should not be overcome in order for us to achieve it. We will dream this dream together and let no woman, nor man, stop it.
