Humanity's fucking awesome

Last time we had someone on the moon was 1972

A friend reminded me today that Artemis II was launching, so I quickly set-up a watch party at my place and we all watched together. After a worrying pause around the T-10 minute mark (which thankfully helped the last remaining friends to come in on time) the launch sequence continued. Free bird was played by another friend at just the right time for the guitar solo to begin playing when the rocket launched.

I fucking love rockets so much, especially when there are humans in them.

We watched it go, higher and higher. Some of humanity’s best and brightest worked on building it, some of its best piloting it, and of course the appropriate automation of these systems, again some of its best designing and running it.

Will we have another human setting foot on the moon in a couple years? Seems probable. I hope to see it.

I miss this sense of wonder, of expectations for the future, of feeling like things will get better (AI timelines anyone?).

And I got it today. It genuinely was there. Hell yeah humanity be flying. Let’s fucking go.

Asteroid mining is mostly a pipe dream. Most things related to humans going to other terrestrial bodies is economically unviable.

Yet we’re still getting our feelers out. Hey, it’s only been 54 years. We’ve only been there 6 times already. 7th time’s the charm.

Going to the Moon has always been a past thing for me, it’s something humanity already did. Insane they did it, we applaud their success and insanity, and continue on. Especially the first landing with Apollo 11, so many things went wrong and they said fuck it. Depressurization causing extra velocity due to the undocking from lunar module not being complete and will cause an overshoot? Fuck it, let’s go ahead. Computer giving 1202 alarms during powered descent, astronauts not knowing what the hell it meant, most of mission control not knowing what the hell it meant? Fuck it, “we’re GO on that alarm”. The overshoot causing them to head towards boulders? Welp gotta go semi-manual control to course correct. Fuel running out barely anything left? Fuck it, let’s go ahead. Buzz Aldrin had his fat ass (support backpack) snap the engine arm switch right off which, by the way, is for launching the lunar module back up? Stick a pen in it, close the circuit. Hell, even on reentry back to Earth they nearly died, Service Module stayed near the Command Module and broke into pieces right next to them, any one of those could’ve led to the crew capsule’s utter destruction.

Hilariously, they even landed in the wrong location. History would’ve told the story a lot different if Buzz and his boys all drowned at sea after everything they went through (and this was decently likely).

And now we’re going back to the Moon again? You and I are gonna likely live to see it? Insane. Absolute insanity.

Tax dollars being used for this kind of stuff, I support. Take more of it. Send the scientists, the engineers, the pilots, let’s discover more, let’s do more, let’s figure out stuff more.

Last we had someone land on the moon was 1972.

Let’s do it again. Hell yeah.