By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.
There’s a certain strain of thought that runs through my mind sometimes, that space is just too big and too empty to really be worth going into. Like the moon and Mars, maybe a couple other in-system planets, are the only things close enough for realistic human trips in lifetimes. And the trips so far have shown us that yes, those are just big balls of monotonous dirt. You ever kinda landed in that state of mind?
In spite of all that, I do still get excited about it, and really enjoyed following Artemis. Excited to see us (maybe, hopefully) land on the moon again soon. It’s remarkable that humans are able to rise to that challenge, and I hope we don’t ever entirely stop.