It’s been 50 years
Call me naive or call me a boomer, but I still remember fondly the space race. I’ve been binging “For All Mankind,” the alternate space history series on Apple TV. We’d have made it to Mars by now.
A piece I wrote for Crooks and Liars in 2013 speaks to where the country seemed headed in the early 1960s before the backlash to the Civil Rights movement gave us the Powell memo, movement conservatism, neoliberal economics and austerians:
Beside Route 66 and elsewhere, Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System – the vast system of roads most of us take for granted – was taking shape from border to border and from coast to coast. It was a national project worthy of a great nation. The country was on the move.
Astronaut Alan Shepard was a national hero. Our parents wanted us to go to college. Our president wanted us to go. Our country wanted us to go. Getting an education was not just a key to a future better than our parents’. It was a patriotic duty. Not just something you could do for you, but what you could do for your country.
America was going to the moon by the end of the decade. We needed scientists and engineers and new technologies. Between the G.I. Bill and government-backed student loans, America was making it more affordable than ever to get an education. It was good for you. It was good for your community. It was good for all of U.S.
Then austerians decided America could no longer afford Americans. We decided that education for its own sake was frivolous, that tax cuts pay for themselves, and that anything (besides the military) that the government paid for was a crime against capitalism and needed to be privatized. Including public education.
Now, after all these decades, the U.S. is going back to the moon with the Artemis I mission:
(CNN) For the first time in 50 years, a spacecraft is preparing to launch on a journey to the moon.
The uncrewed Artemis I mission, including the Space Launch System Rocket and Orion spacecraft, is targeting liftoff on August 29 between 8:33 a.m. ET and 10:33 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Although there is no human crew aboard the mission, it’s the first step of the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon and eventually land them on Mars.
The Orion spacecraft will enter a distant retrograde orbit of the moon and travel 40,000 miles beyond it, going further than any spacecraft intended to carry humans. Crews will ride aboard Artemis II on a similar trajectory in 2024, and the first woman and the next man to land on the moon are slated to arrive at the lunar south pole in late 2025 on the Artemis III mission.
NASA has learned that space is almost as popular as dinosaurs, and it means to make the most of its spotlight. It’s making the launch a show:
Appearances by celebrities like Jack Black, Chris Evans and Keke Palmer and performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Josh Groban and Herbie Hancock and “America the Beautiful” by The Philadelphia Orchestra and cellist Yo-Yo Ma are also part of the program.
Ho-kay. I’ll be watching.
Artemis I in numbers. More here.
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