Artemis II

As a child of the 60's, the various space missions became very exiting as I became aware of the world.  I don't have any memory of the earlier adventures, but I do have vague memories of Apollo 7 and many more of Apollo 8 and subsequent missions.  As the manned Apollo missions continued I soon wanted to know about what the Soviets were up to and where all the unmanned missions were going.

I recall disappointment with the early pictures Mariner took of Mars (it looked just like the moon!)

What took so long to get back to Mercury?  What a shame that Venus is so hostile.

After the Apollo missions, then came the Grand Tour of the outer planets.  The Voyagers became the little craft that could.  With the Pioneers before them, these were examples of human ingenuity to thier finest.  Designed to operate for enough time to complete their missions (in the case of Voyager II the years to get to Neptune), they have outlasted their most pessimistic critic.

What an engineering feat to land a craft (ESA Huygens) on Saturn's moon Titan!

What a pleasure to know of such engineering prowness while here on earth it's always a race for the bottom.  "Higher call volume than usual" has become the norm.  Among the disappointments of the 21st century, that phrase sums it up and I would say has become the "mantra of our times".

Artemis II lifted off only a few minutes later than scheduled (well within the launch window) and within half an hour of the mission had already taken the crew beyond where anybody has been since 1972.  It was about three times the altitude of the ISS by this time. 

The United States has launched an international mission (there is a Canadian on board) and they can't bother to even list the metric measurements with the old imperial system (7.5 billion of us use the metric system at least partially).  It was annoying to me to have to translate BACK to the metric system to figure out what the temperature was at the cape and when the mission passed the ISS altitude.

I started using the metric system when I was still in high school and now I'm retired.  Honest to god, that country is both the most advanced and most backward at the same time.  Don't get me started about how an industrialized nation lacks a social safety net.

Anyway, it's amazing to see what the crew is seeing from the spacecraft as their orbit apogee take them out to where the geosynchronous satellites live.

A crescent earth.

As has been said by others (better than me); everyone alive is "there".  In a single picture.  All eighty one hundred million of us.

(Yes, all the flat earthers regard this as just another media circus to justify spending money for some hair brained scheme.  It's too bad so many of those knuckleheads have the levers of political power).