Thoughts on Artemis II

 What are my thoughts on the Artemis II mission?  Uh, complicated.

On one hand, I am a big supporter of space missions, especially crewed missions, and I am a huge supporter of going back to the moon.  But I’m not a fan of the Artemis Program because I want a sustained presence on the moon, and a billion-dollar rocket that launches once a year isn’t how you do that.  My biggest fear right now, is that maybe we’ll do a landing or two, and then the politics will change and all these Grand Moon Base plans will be canceled because we need that money to give billionaires another tax cut. 

I didn’t follow the mission that closely – there was an impending WWIII I was a bit concerned with – but I did hear talk of it being inspirational.  Which is something I’ve come to hate.  I have forgotten how many times I’ve heard something will “inspire future generations.” Why don’t we build something now, for the current generation?  Like, the SLS is a great rocket, but if it flies ten times I’ll be flabbergasted.  So we’ll have spent untold billions and all these years to, what, just inspire future generations to build a better system?  Couldn’t we have just built the better system to begin with? 

I guess, in the end I’ll say that Artemis II was a great mission.  I just don’t think we’ll go too far down the path it started.