@AkaSci Personally, I find it quite disappointing that so many of my friends & colleagues in the space bubble choose to ignore the political environment that surrounds their “hobby”.

Particularly today, given that space is also the hobby of some of the richest individuals on the planet, people who fund the neo-fascists in power, & whose other businesses manipulate public opinion while trampling all over civil & labour regulations.

<rant mode off>

@AkaSci Add to that the current political background, & I’m struggling to conjure much enthusiasm.

I don’t mean to take anything away from the engineers & astronauts who achieved a miracle in the 1960s or those doing it again today, but it’s not taking place in a vacuum.

Of course, Apollo also took place in a dark & dangerous time of superpower struggle & as a direct product of it, but I was just a kid then – now I hope I know better.

@AkaSci Well, you’ve got to get it out the door somehow

To be honest though, I’m deeply unexcited by Artemis. Almost sixty years after Apollo & despite all the huge developments in tech & computing since, it has a ridiculously slow cadence to repeat essentially the same feat: for reference, all of Apollo 8, 9, 10, & 11 happened within a 7 month period . And the joint architecture with SpaceX for actually landing on the Moon is completely bananas.