As we prepare for tonight’s launch and hold our breath, let us remember that our space program has always been a core part of what makes America truly great.
The phrase is emblazoned upon the Apollo 1 memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.: “Ad Astra Per Aspera.” I first encountered it in my childhood — I’m almost certain it was after the 1986 Challenger disaster — and it struck me even then, as if ringing some strange aspirational chord within my imagination, one as full of serious purpose as the somber assonances of its Latin suggested: “To the stars, through difficulties.”
And difficulties there were. On January 27, 1967, during a launchpad rehearsal for the planned February launch of the Apollo 1 spacecraft — the first step of America’s long-charted course to the moon — an electrical malfunction caused a cabin fire in the command module that killed all three crewmembers — Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and command pilot (and Mercury astronaut) Gus Grissom. But we persevered and made it to the moon.
Fifty-three years after the last time Americans walked on the surface of Luna Nostra (in December of 1972), no one has done so since. No one, in fact, has even launched a manned lunar mission of any sort.
Until now. Tonight, with the launch of the Artemis II mission — scheduled to circle around the the dark side of the moon and return, as if Apollo 13’s route had been planned in advance — mankind returns to outer space for more than mere Earth orbit. And with it I feel echoes of that warm patriotic feeling from youth: It is good that we are returning to space.
Three Americans and one Canadian will be aboard the Artemis II as it heads toward a scheduled 6:24 p.m. ET launch, and I will be watching and praying for their safe journeys. As a child of 1980, it is perhaps inevitable that I remember the United States space program primarily in terms of its public tragedies, as opposed to its initial triumphs. (I knew about those only through musty history books and NOVA documentaries.)
It was only after seeing The Right Stuff at school — isn’t it amazing, the sorts of movies they had sixth-graders watch back then? — that I asked my dad if he knew anything more about it. Boy did he ever — he pretty much reacted the way I would if my son approached me asking if I knew anything about the band Radiohead — and suffice it to say by the time Apollo 13 came out three years later, I was there on opening weekend to watch it and actually judge it against the real story. (It still holds up.)
But that era of spacefaring died out long before I was born. Instead I grew up with the Space Shuttle, and the Space Station — an era of limited ambitions and limited horizons. I was told it made more budgetary sense, even as I saw more and more of the federal budget thrown away — at times practically set on fire — for vastly less worthy causes than maintaining an American space program. For years, it fell almost completely silent, with SpaceX eventually filling the gap. (This is, in fact, one of the reasons I will never be able to truly dislike Elon Musk: For all the man’s eccentricities and vanities, he puts men in space.)
Now it feels good to be back. As we prepare for tonight’s launch and hold our breath, let us remember that our space program has always been a core part of what makes America truly great — especially as seen through the eyes of others. Regardless of whatever China decides to do in the future, only one country has ever done this before. Let’s do it again. And let’s put boots on the ground next time. Ad astra per aspera.