NASA, of all people, gets back into the space biz

Too bad some of the fame attached to remarks made on humanity’s first landing on the moon, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” on July 20, 1969, and the even more renown, “One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” was never extended to the enthusiastic, if ungrammatical, burst at the last moon landing, Apollo 17, on Dec. 11, 1972.

“We is here!” cried rookie astronaut Harrison (Jack) Schmitt. “Man, is we here.”

Now we are returning to the neighborhood for the first time in nearly 54 years. All exploration is grounded in the time when it occurs, and just as the Apollo program was an artifact of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, so Artemis II, expected to swing closest to the moon on Monday, can be seen through a lens of 2026 and a nation in turmoil.

A time when actual reality can be lost in the fun house of social media — for instance, we’re skimming past, not landing on, the moon. Artemis II will fly about 5,000 miles above the lunar surface; to put that in context, the International Space Station orbits about 250 miles above the earth.

Is the public enthralled by this latest foray into space? Hard to say. Boredom with the assumed wonder of space exploration is a theme almost as old as space exploration itself.

If you remember Ron Howard’s excellent movie “Apollo 13,” interest in what would have been the third moon landing was tepid until an explosion damaged the ship and forced a dramatic skin-of-their-teeth return. Before the crisis, while Jim Lovell does a live broadcast from space, the guys at Mission Control in Houston sneak glances at the Astros game, and none of the networks chose to carry Lovell’s show.

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Chicagoans were almost as amazed by the fact they could watch it live on television.

”We were all there, bound together by the miracle of communication that intertwined all the other miracles of technology that marketed man’s first step on a celestial body,” the Chicago Daily News said in an editorial.

The Chicago Tribune, with characteristic modesty, editorialized that their coverage of the event was an achievement on par with the landing itself.

To me, half the wonder is not the journey but who’s doing it. After years of headlines about private space ventures, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, I reacted to the Artemis II mission with a surprised, “Does NASA still do that kind of thing?”

To add context, Artemis II took off Wednesday night. On Friday, the Trump administration proposed chopping the NASA budget by 23%.

I had two questions. Apollo used a three-man crew. So why does Artemis need four astronauts?

The short answer is the Artemis spacecraft is designed to be flown by four astronauts — it has 50% more living space than the Apollo command module — but reading the NASA release announcing the crew, you can’t help but suspect there’s some Biden-era diversity going on as well:

“Among the crew are the first woman, first person of color, and first Canadian on a lunar mission,” NASA wrote in April 2023, “and all four astronauts will represent the best of humanity as they explore for the benefit of all.”

Put that way, I’m surprised Artemis II wasn’t scrapped at the last moment, like a nearly-completed wind farm, now that Canada is viewed as something of a renegade province, the way China views Taiwan. The U.S. is getting out of the “benefit of all” business.

My other question was: Who’s Artemis? I have a rough knowledge of ancient myth, but Artemis didn’t come readily to mind. I didn’t even realize Artemis is a woman — the Greek name for Diana, goddess of the hunt.

Apollo’s twin sister. Also goddess of the moon. I’m not sure the Trump administration would be happy with the various gender bending qualities of Artemis. “She was the Lady of Wild Things, Huntsman-in-chief to the gods, an odd office for a woman,” Edith Hamilton writes in “Mythology.”

As a huntress, Artemis loves wild beasts, and is also a fierce and uncompromising protector of purity. If you look up in the sky tonight and see the constellation Orion, with its easily-spotted three-star belt, one story has him dallying with one of Artemis’s young hunting companions, so she sends a scorpion to kill him, banishing Orion into the night sky. A warning to the wise.

While it is good to see the mistress of wild animals honored in space flight, the journey also occurs in a week when the National Forestry Service was functionally eliminated. Artemis would not be pleased.