We are as explorers discovering the illusion. With new geographies come old responses.
Artemis II
The aspiration to got the the moon, to leave this planet and live in a can far away – many wish it. I did with Apollo. Caught up in the tech, the daring, the spectacle and hyperbole I still do with Artemis.
Watching Artemis II motionless, tall and proud against the blue Florida sky, gently breathing steam from the immense cold of the rocket. Then that countdown. Ten seconds that stretch into eternity. Never feeling so slow. Until zero and with held breath the tower lifts.
Combustion of thrust channeled into one objective, free the mass from the hold of Earth. Take these four tiny fragile messy operators, atop the firecracker below, safely away. My hand reached out as if I could raise it, help the launch along.
In its commentary, Mission Control gives data checks in monotones. Theirs is a jargon for events we cannot see, internal to the sequencing needed, as we witness the rocket climb, then held by the orbital pulling fall around our sphere.
From the crew. “Great view. We have got a great sunrise.” ” We just didn’t want to let you go without saying that the view out of window three from about 38,000 nautical miles, the entire half of the earth is spectacular.”
Few have experienced their perspective.
As a mountaineer I have looked out from many peaks. When I summited Monte Bianco and saw into the Italian valley below at sunrise I was again a small form in a vast landscape. A mere dot. I looked in vain for where our apartment was. I could make out rough shapes but nothing with precision.
My guide had walked me through the early morning. Headlamps showing a way he had traversed many times. But with the same carful purposeful steps as the snow is never the same. His was a measured step I tried to mimic. It was cold. Dark. And starry.
Many in the valley would smile when I looked up and said ‘one day’ I will summit. They were fine with skiing on the lower slopes, taking a break to have a coffee and bask in the sun. The mountain was scenery, not invitation.
Moon/space detractors have many questions of the Artemis endeavour. A hubris of the privileged marking territory. A circus of amusement couched in terms of progress and heroics. Even folly burning fuel amidst a burning up planet.
Getting to the moon is not complex. Complicated yes. But it responds to known laws of math and physics. An engineer’s dream land. The rational mind can make sense of that. No need for messy birds or curious squirrels, let alone the water it would take for a sea turtle while we harvest the moon for needed minerals for earth.
But to live in a closed system as large as our home? That is complex. No crew commanders. We barely make sense of the past two hundred years of competing views of life. We still place our human-ness at the centre, when long ago Copernicus and Darwin showed otherwise.
There are no centres in a sphere. Artemis sent the pictures.
We shy from the hard of living alongside each of us. In a can, four can get along. In this can of Earth sometimes even hundreds cannot.
As Artemis II lifted off to venture farther, it was as if wonder and woe were tied in a bow and sent out. While the flight plan has a result of reaching this further in space than ever before, I am looking forward to seeing again the perspective from above of the whole we only get glimpses of portions when on the ground. An overview, talking me above myself and reminding me of how spectacular our home really is, from any vantage point.
Exploration keeps revealing that the frontier is not somewhere else. The frontier is the relationship with what we already possess.
Come back safely Integrity.
Come back safely and tell us what we might need to know and what we should admit we already do.
