By Niki Ingram
Like many others this past April, I was completely entranced by the Artemis II space mission. From the time the spacecraft left earth’s atmosphere until the splashdown nine days later, I was spellbound by the astronauts and their journey. That said, it took me a while to figure out why I was so fascinated by this mission.
I grew up in a time when going to space was at first exciting but once Apollo 11 landed on the moon, the extraordinary became ordinary unless there were crises like the Apollo XIII mission or the horror of the Challenger. I was only moderately interested in the space shuttle, and while I was sad to see it go, I didn’t think much about it after it was gone. This backdrop made it hard for me to understand why I was so excited by Artemis II.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this mission meant a great deal to me on several different levels. First, I projected a lot onto the astronauts. In a short time, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen became my friends. They looked and acted like my America. There was a woman, a person of color, and everyone went about their jobs with seemingly no outward tensions. They liked and respected each other. I have no idea as to what any of the politics of the astronauts are, and I liked that. There was no seething or anger about someone having something that he or she didn’t deserve. They were four people doing their jobs while enjoying the work and each other.
The actual pictures from space were astonishing. We were looking at images that have never been seen before. It has been more than fifty years since we last went to the moon and there have been exponential leaps in science and technology. There was beauty and elegance to a previously unseen world that was overwhelming. To quote Buzz Lightyear there was a sense that we were “going to infinity and beyond” and that there is no telling what we can do next if we put our collective minds together.
As I thought about my jumble of emotions, I realized that I grew up in a time of American exceptionalism - where we expected to go to the moon, achieve scientifically, and continue to advance our knowledge. This is not to say that Americans are better than anyone else, but to me that phrase meant that being smart mattered. Excellence mattered and doing the work that it takes to get to excellence mattered. There can be no short cuts when you are sending people to the far side of the moon. How you achieve the goal is as important as reaching the goal. In a world where being smart is often scorned, this mission is a reminder that people can work hard to achieve all types of goals.
As Artemis II reawakened awe in me, it seems to have created awe in children and young people, as they talked about the possibility of becoming astronauts or scientists. I have a feeling that we will see more astronauts this Halloween. At the very least students, of all ages, were again able to see the importance of science which perhaps mean that more people will want to become scientists or mathematicians or that more people will have their imaginations captured by space and want to write about it. Who knows what we will discover or learn from these astronauts and the experiments they conducted? Who knows what stories can be told from their nine days? Who knows what stories will come from the nascent writers who watched this mission? Who knows all the places this mission can take us?
In a world where network television is a relic as so many stream their media content, there are very few experiences that society shares in real time. That makes a difference. When we each get our experiences through a lens that algorithms think we prefer, then what we see is by definition skewed. That didn’t happen here. We all simply saw something beautiful and got to decide what we thought about it. Apparently, many of us liked what we saw. Perhaps we should have more experiences like this.
Thank you, Reid, Victoria, Christina, and Jeremy, for reminding me and many others of how magical space is and how cool it is to be smart, adventurous, and willing to do the work.
Niki T. Ingram is co-editor in chief of The Philadelphia Lawyer magazine.
