Blame Star Wars for US boredom with NASA Artemis moon voyage

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OPINION AND COMMENTARY

Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters.

The NASA moon rocket stands on Pad 39B before the Artemis 1 mission to orbit the moon at the Kennedy Space Center, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Brynn Anderson AP

Its been almost 50 years since the United States put the last man on the moon, a fact that seems almost inconceivable now.

Of course, NASA has put a car on Mars, which is way more challenging, I would think. So props to them. And the silly, irrational Elon Musk put an actual car in Earths orbit. Thats something a 12-year-old with a couple of billion dollars would do, but I kind of dig it.

Finally, however, NASA is about to launch Artemis, another moon mission. But to my surprise, Ive heard very little discussion about it among friends and acquaintances. (OK, one friend talks about it who is, like me, a Boomer space junkie.)

Most people my age knew exactly where they were the day men walked on the moon. I was being gently pummeled by my parents on July 20, 1969, in front of a Magnavox television, an 8-year-old trying to stay awake to witness the most stupendous event in human history.

Growing up, we knew all these names in the household: Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Jack King (the voice of Mission Control), Gus Grissom, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Frank McGee (NBC News, covering the moon shots with a big orange Gulf logo on the desk), Jules Bergman (ABC News Science Editor!), Roy Neal (NBC correspond who covered decades of launches) and on and on.

I cannot tell you the name of one astronaut currently employed by NASA, nor can I name any network space correspondents. None.

Quotes like Zero-G and I feel fine, Give us a reading on the 1202 alarm, or What the hell is SCE to AUX? were commonly-known astronaut quotes.

I have pondered this, and I have come to the conclusion that Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, Star Trek and other media space adventures make a moon launch seem, to the general public, like catching an Uber.

But its not.

As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted on Meet the Press last week before the scrubbed Artemis launch, you can expect in a test flight that everything is not going to go as you expect it to. Thats part of a test flight.

Weve forgotten that. But we shouldn’t have.

For example, on Jan. 27, 1967, three Apollo astronauts died in a fire during a ground test. And on Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts. On Feb. 1, 2003, seven astronauts died during re-entry on the space shuttle Columbia.

Nelson, a former US senator from Florida, was a payload specialist on the Columbia, the last successful shuttle flight before the Challenger disaster. Very few living people would have a better sense of that risk than he does.

Four astronauts will go to the moon, scheduled for a 2025 landing, including a woman and a Black American. Artemis will be a more expansive lunar mission, given that our technology is far more advanced than that of the 1960s. For example, on the Apollo lunar lander, the pilots punched noun/verb combinations into a console that looked less sophisticated than a Texas Instruments calculator.

They had slide rules on board to do those sorts of things. A lot of you probably dont even know what a slide rule is.

This mission will contain dummy astronauts with sensors, and the command module will feature four seats, a rowing machine and a flushing toilet.

This is not the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, a plywood-and-Christmas light illusion. This launch is significant, and we should be more into it. I will be. Its almost a childhood moment, and I also hope children around the world will be inspired by this, too.

If youre not inspired, call an Uber to take you to the new Star Wars movie. You know it’ll all work out.

But Artemis is real. And thats way cooler.

The NASA moon rocket stands on Pad 39B before the Artemis 1 mission to orbit the moon at the Kennedy Space Center, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Brynn Anderson AP Related stories from Sacramento Bee

Senior Associate Editor Jack Ohman has been at The Bee since 2013. Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, he also won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, Scripps Howard Award, national SPJ Award and National Headliner Award. A Portland State grad, Jack also writes editorials and columns.

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