In this first day of the year, I thought briefly about diving back into politics, global affairs, etc., which I’ve generally ignored (by my usual standards) since last January. I mean really ignored, to the point of not knowing enough about recent events to comment. Occasionally I’ll tell myself I really should look into why the honor of the U.S. Navy is being fouled by the task of blowing up small boats coming out of Venezuela, but what good would it do?
And now I’ve seen that almost everything being offered by the various papers I peruse — items in the subject areas I had always assumed were most important — are as absurd and dispiriting as as they’ve been for awhile now. So much for that re-engagement resolution.
But… I did find one bright spot. It’s this item from the NYT:
Your Wait for These Space Events Is About to Pay Off
This is encouraging. Homo Sapiens actually trying to stretch itself forward again, the way we used to do. Rather than sitting about stewing in our little obsessions.
For awhile, I’ve had to look backwards to get a glimpse of what it’s like to look forward. Remember when I wrote about my recent interest in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era? Well, I think a lot of that was because that was a time when this country saw its possibilities as unlimited, and had a positive view of its future. America had survived the Civil War and overcome slavery, the issue that had inhibited the national spirit since our founding. Americans believed they could to anything, and they went out and proved it in a variety of fields.
Which means it was a lot like the time in which I grew up, when we had whipped the Nazis and the Japanese imperialists and were leading the free world in the advancement of liberal values — and the advancement of everything else: Technology, exploration, high and low culture, etc.
It was the Space Age, a term that excited us then, but has seemed so quaint in recent decades.
And now we have this one encouraging news story telling us:
NASA is sending astronauts back toward the moon. No, for real this time.
It has been more than 50 years since humans exited low-Earth orbit and traveled around the moon. In the time since, space agencies have built space shuttles and space stations, but their crews have remained within our planet’s close embrace.
Early in 2026, astronauts from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will again travel around the moon and back….
And that’s not all. We can also look forward to:
- More great pics — fancy, high-tech pics — from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Yeah, I know: That sounds kind of like the name of a house of fashion design, but it fits. This is an stunningly beautifully designed universe, and we’re just getting started at admiring it.
- More trips to Mars and its moons — by us, by the Chinese, and Japan’s getting in on the act, too.
- Another solar eclipse, in August. OK, this isn’t mankind doing stuff, but it’s fun to watch, if you can get there. This one won’t be local.
And more. Things to look forward to. This is a good start to the year…
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For what it’s worth, I read that story at the breakfast table after awakening from a dream about space. Sort of.
It was an odd one, but most of my dreams are odd. It wasn’t about the thrill of boldly going. More the opposite, in a way, if you’re talking human exploration.
In this dream, humans were very busily engaged on Mars — we had all sorts of things going on on that rock. But they were largely things like we’ve seen before — drones and the like. No humans. We had various enterprises there — not just looking around, but mining resources and stuff like that. So much, and so automated, that we sort of took it all for granted.
Then, it came to my attention that some humans had landed, because it had become necessary for them to do something that the machines couldn’t handle. I saw pictures of these astronauts, but I couldn’t recognize any of them, because there had been no publicity or hoopla. They were just going there to do a job, and the humans on Earth were ignoring the fact that the first humans were on Mars.
I guess folks back home were too busy watching football or something.
Not a very exciting space dream, so I was happy to see the news story…
Sorry Brad, you cannot get away from politics. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a video reminding us why we went to the moon, why we’re going back, and why we will never go to Mars. If you google: Steven Bartlett: Why we’ll never go to Mars. It’s a 15 minute Tyson interview.
For whatever reason, maybe because I’m a lot closer to my end, I wonder why there are 2 trillion galaxies. What is really out there and how did it come about? As a dog cannot comprehend algebra, there are things we will never be able to grasp.
OBTW, it will take 7-9 months to get to Mars and the window to launch is every 26 months…or something like that.
A little company called SpaceX run by some unknown guy had an impressive year too.. and the lunar trip won’t happen without their help.
“Key 2025 Highlights
Launch Frequency: SpaceX achieved a record-breaking 165+ orbital flights, including a significant 32nd flight of a single Falcon 9 booster.
Starlink Expansion: By December 2025, over 3,000 Starlink satellites were launched, with a notable decrease in de-orbiting rates in the latter half of the year.
Starship Development: NASA expected SpaceX to demonstrate in-space orbital refueling in 2025, a crucial step for the Artemis III lunar landing.
Launch Sites: Florida’s Space Coast hosted a record 109 launches in 2025, driven heavily by SpaceX. The final mission of 2025 took place on December 27 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, deploying the Italian CSG-3 satellite.”
In his spare time, Musk’s Tesla sold 41% of the electric vehicles in the U.S… Starlink brought Internet connectivity to the entire world include critical military support in Ukraine.. Neurolink is prepared to change the lives of paralyzed people.. The Boring company is changing the way tunnels are constructed.. and Musk still had time to run all that and play around with his toy, X, to change the social media landscape.
I grew up watching, following NASA, being with Mercury, through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle, and on. I want to see NASA get back to the moon. But I don’t see the flights to the moon as sustainable. Launching every two years won’t establish a permanent manned presence.
Veterans Day weekend, 2016, we got to meet Christopher Ferguson, the commander of the final Space Shuttle mission. When I met him, I said, “Atlantis was the second final flight that I’ve seen.” That drew his interest. “What flight was is?” I answered “Apollo”. “Apollo 17, the final moon landing?” “No.” “Skylab?” “No.” “Okay, what flight was it?” I answered, “Apollo/Soyuz.” He replied, “That was the final flight.”