I never thought (at least not in the past 25 years, give or take) that I’ll live long enough to see this.
Note the indicator I highlighted in the lower right.
Distance to the Moon.
For the first time since December, 1972.
I was not yet 10 in December, 1972. The world was troubled back then, just as it is troubled right now.
This launch? I was worried sick. A space launch system the design of which was very heavily influenced by politics. Political pressure to ensure launch. Frustrating issues with the rocket in the preceding months, with multiple delays.
And yet… so far so good. The launch proceeded without a glitch. The spacecraft is orbiting the Earth, soon to continue its journey to the Moon.
To the Moon.
I am astonished by my own reaction to these words. Thinking of Jules Verne, thinking of Apollo 8, of Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo 17… and then 53 years — more than half a century! — with no human traveling beyond Low Earth Orbit.
You know what. Let me insert something here that these days isn’t very popular, for a whole host of (valid) reasons.
Yes. An American flag. On the Moon. Because…
Because they are on their way to the Moon again.
Here I feel envious – you so to say witnessed many achievements of the “space age” in your childhood and youth, when it was easy to believe that “Apple-trees will blossom on the Mars” perhaps in just two or three decades. Even we, boys of late 1980s were quite sure about this point. How many times I re-read certain book by Ukrainian writer about the space mission to the Venus – which was published in its final form in 1956 and placed the mission some “five years after unmanned mission to the Moon”. Author imagined Venus inhabited by giant insects and so part of the book describes heroic deeds of the crew there. Well, he couldn’t know that temperature and pressure make even robotic surface study of Venus nearly impossible. But there is Mars still. And nevertheless, more than 60 years in the space age, we celebrate people hurled by rocked just behind the Moon as a record of furthest manned flight so far, unless I’m mistaken.
Times of the Cold War were troublesome, but as space flights were started by diverting military rockets to the skies, that gave hope. Now, however, things feel darker, news of this flight are obscured by news of ongoing conflicts and even there is article suggesting military use of rocket supposedly designed for peaceful purpose.
Military use of space technology was always there, and the Cold War competition was not always benign. But yes, we were hoping… hoping? We we certain that by the year 2000, there will not only be outposts on the Moon, perhaps on Mars, but even a manned flight to Jupiter (a’la “2001”) was a very real possibility. Artemis II now allows me to hope again… even as things, as you suggest, are far darker than they should be. On that note, back in 1968, no sane human on the planet I think expected us to survive to the year 2000 without major (nuclear) war… yet here we are, in 2026, and the worst has so far been avoided. So perhaps there’s hope yet, for us fur-less monkeys…