Kenneth Chang for The New York Times:
When NASA achieves the goal of landing the next astronauts on the moon as part of its Artemis program — now promised by the Biden administration to include the first woman and the first person of color there — they are likely to be riding in a SpaceX vehicle.
It truly is incredible what a private company has been able to do, not only to enable, but to spur on, our return to space in a major way.
The Artemis plans currently call for the astronauts to launch into orbit on top of a Space Launch System rocket. The upper stage of the rocket is to then propel the Orion capsule, where the astronauts will be sitting, toward the moon.
Unlike NASA’s Apollo moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s, the lander spacecraft is to be sent separately to lunar orbit. Orion is to dock with the lander, which will then head to the surface.
But Starship will dwarf Orion in size, making the architecture similar to sailing a yacht across the Atlantic Ocean and then switching to a cruise ship for the short ride into port.
During the pandemic, we’ve gotten into watching the Apple TV+ show For All Mankind. I was skeptical at first,¹ but it’s really good. And it’s not only good at the basics (plot, acting, pacing, etc..), it’s good because it makes you wonder what would have happened had we not taken our collective foot off the gas in the space race. Granted that in the show the reason why we could not is because the battle is ongoing with the USSR, but still.
There’s one episode left in season 2 and I hope in seasons 3 and beyond as we enter the 1990s and 2000s, they start to show that perhaps technology on Earth is accelerating faster than it actually did as a result of all the work done in space. They sort of hint at this with video communication in the 1980s already… It’s sort of an aspirational thing which is weird because we did take our foot off the gas, but now that we’re back, it can be again…
¹ Though I’m not sure why I was skpetical given that it’s created by Ronald D. Moore, who did the excellent Battlestar Galactica remake in the 2000s. I think I was skeptical just because it was an Apple TV+ show! But that’s actually quickly proving itself to be a signal of quality.
