Artemis II

🌎 🚀 🌖

There are days, lots of days lately, where I think it’s all basically over for global humanity’s progress. I mean just look around you at the state of the world right now. Our mad king wants to demolish an entire country if a deal is not reached in the war he started. Gas prices and global economic supply shocks continue to hit hard, to say nothing of the human toll of yet another warfront opening in the world. Despite all the shit we are going through on the ground, NASA with a cadre of global partners from around the world, have sent four humans back to the moon.

That’s it….we’re going to the moon. It has been more than half a century, but we are going BACK TO THE MOON! Is that not the coolest shit ever? At the time of writing, the crew of the Artemis II mission is actively describing what they are seeing as they’ve today surpassed the record for furthest humans from Earth. They are making active observations of the far side of the moon to a giddy science team back on Earth. I am watching all of this from the comfort of my workstation in clear as day imagery with near real-time audio. The crew shared a very human moment when they requested to name a crater after the capsule and after Captain Reed Wiseman’s late wife which really cemented to me how much these are still fundamentally human endeavors.

It gives me such hope to have sat there on April 1st with my wife and children and watch the rocket launch on TV. I feel like I was able to connect to past generations and also look ahead at the same time. Things are bad now, they will probably get worse but they CAN get better.

Things must get better. So that we all have a future. WE must make things better. WE must hold evil people to account. WE must do hard things and do them bravely. Today I salute the four brave souls in their mission to expand humanity’s grasp of the universe. Theya are supported by a global crew of the most curious and brightest our species has to offer, who are in turn supported by us all who enthusiastically want to see things be better.

So mote it be, for all humankind.