"The Good War"

The astronauts named their spacecraft Integrity because... 

The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers required for mission success. The name is also a nod to the extensive integrated effort – from the more than 300,000 spacecraft components to the thousands of people across the world – that must come together to venture to the Moon and back, inspire the world, and set course for a long-term presence at the Moon. Integrity is rooted in a shared core value of NASA, the agency’s astronaut office, and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

OK, corporate speak at its finest but the truth is that in everything they did and said before, during and after their magnificent voyage to the Moon and back, the Artemis II astronauts, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Reid Weisman, were exemplars of integrity and in being so as I mentioned in my last post, we Americans and Canadians should be proud of these four brave individuals who represent the best of our two countries. And the entire world can be proud of the integrity shown by the (tens of) thousands of individuals responsible for making the Artemis mission a stellar example of the triumph of the human spirit.

Sadly, their news cycle has already passed, and we Americans are back to witnessing the opposite of integrity, the very worst of our country. Google the phrase "the opposite of integrity" and you will find many words with a variety of meanings, yet each perfectly describing a different aspect of this many faceted administration.

This month, April, 2026, which began so promising with the launch of Artemis II, was a particular doozy.

The other day I had lunch with my friend and we observed how every time we get together, a new low has been reached by the current resident of the White House. The new low since we last met was the following comment posted online:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

Without actually committing it, it's hard to imagine getting any lower than threatening genocide but I have faith that somehow Donald Trump will manage.

He of course was talking about Iran and what he planned to do to that country if they didn't reach a deal with him to end the war that he and Benjamin Netanyahu started at the end of February.

It's remarkable that no matter how low this man goes, his enablers will find a way to justify him.

That comment just shows what a brilliant dealmaker he is, after all, because of that threat, Iran came to the negotiating table...

is but one example. But this threat is no different than your neighbor having a dispute with you and threatening  to burn down your house and murder your children if you don't comply with his wishes. 

You might say: "well that's illegal and I'd have every right to call the police and have that neighbor arrested." Which is true but in the case of geo-politics, there is no international police force capable of arresting the sitting leader of a country. If there were, Vladimir Putin would be behind bars right now.

Former leaders who committed illegal acts while in power are another story which is why Netanyahu is so keen on staying in power by prolonging the conflicts in which he has involved his country and in starting new conflicts. Unfortunately our own president has his own ulterior motives to start wars, not the least of these motives starts with the initials J.E.

Beyond the grave moral implications of that threat, there is the very practical matter of not being taken seriously diplomatically when he doesn't go through with such threats. Don't get me wrong, the entire world should be eternally grateful he didn't carry out this threat. But make a threat enough times and not carry through, and pretty soon no one will take you seriously, as has already happened in the case with this president and his war with Iran.

As I mentioned in previous posts, this president is best defined not by the complicated characters found in the world's  great literature, but by the simpletons found in Aesop's fables which always end with the moral: "don't be like that guy." Here he is playing the role of "the boy who cried wolf."

To underscore this president's simpleton qualities, this month he famously posted an AI generated image of himself dressed as a Christlike figure appearing to heal a sick man as they are surrounded by concerned citizens (all of them white), in front of a backdrop containing a mix of patriotic, religious, and military iconography.

Ah he's just creating a tiff like he always does, trying to get under the skin of his detractors...

said the sycophants.

What they failed to grasp was his detractors were all laughing hysterically at the idiocy of it all, while tens of millions of his Christian supporters felt betrayed by the idolatrous image.

Caught off guard, never having occurred to him that this image would be profoundly offensive to his otherwise faithful minions, the president took the picture down the day he posted it. Interestingly, he never took down the comment about wiping out Persian civilization forever.

Then he picked a fight with the Pope.

In response, perhaps his most devoted public sycophant Sean Hannity went on the air recently "sending a message to Pope Leo." 

In his "message", Hannity said this:

As of today, I no longer consider myself a Catholic.

I'm sure that message left the Pope quaking in his boots.

Lots of folks naturally took that to mean Hannity stopped being a Catholic after Pope Leo XIV made pointed negative references to the current war in Iran. But Hannity in his rant goes on to contradict himself, it turns out he actually left the Church several years ago because of "institutionalized corruption at all levels of the Church", later joining an Evangelical Christian church.

There are precious few times I agree with Sean Hannity but I too left the Church as an active participant for the same reason, although for what it's worth, I still consider myself a Catholic.

Hannity went on to point out the numerous human rights atrocities committed by the Iranian regime ever since taking power in 1979. I agree with that as well.

Then came a favorite strategy of the MAGA faithful, presenting an argument with the fancy Latin name, the "tu quoque fallacy", a tactic more familiar to modern ears as "whataboutism.". Hannity points out that the Pope criticizes the president but he doesn't say anything about Iran. Quite honestly I don't know if the Pope has ever publicly commented on the Iranian government but if he hasn't there is probably a good reason, his comments would likely fall on deaf ears since the extremist Muslim regime there is not likely to take advice from a Christian leader, any more than our current government would take advice from a Muslim cleric.

What really seamed to get Hannity's panties all in a bunch is the Pontiff's having met in the past with two notable Illinois Democrats, David Axelrod and our "ultra left" Governor J.B. Pritzker which prompted the Fox host to say:

Why is the Pope twisting religion to only attack Trump? Is it because he’s a run-of-the-mill Trump-hating Democrat that lacks moral clarity about radical Islam?

It takes a lot of chutzpah for anyone, let alone that beacon of moral clarity Sean Hannity, to accuse a Pope of lacking moral clarity but there you have it.  

Regarding the Pope's comments on the current war, Hannity takes issue with this comment of the Pope's:

God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.

That is simply not biblically accurate says Hannity. He correctly points out the hundreds of times the Bible references war... 

for equally depicting God as authorizing, commanding, (and) intervening in battles.

Hannity summed it all up by saying the president is right, and the Pope is wrong.

His comments were echoed by another member of team MAGA, J.D. Vance, the vice president who at a conference in Tulsa, attended by far fewer people than seats to accommodate them, made the following remarkable head-scratching comment:

I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.

Later, responding to the Pope's comment about God not blessing conflicts, in what for Vance must have seemed like his brilliant gotcha moment, the VP went on:

Was God on the side of Americans who liberated Holocaust Camps?... I certainly think the answer is yes.

In doing so, the VP and later the current Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson castigated the Pope by invoking the "Just War Doctrine" of the Catholic Church whose origins can be traced in part all the way back to the work of St. Augustine in the fourth century. It should be noted that the current Pope is an Augustinian priest who once led that order. 

Indeed the VP and the Speaker say correctly that our involvement in some wars, like the Second World War, aka "The Good War",* was just.

Now let's assume for a moment that the Augustinian priest, Chicago born Robert Prevost who became Pope Leo XIV last year, knows a thing or two about the Just War Doctrine.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a summary of Catholic teaching, here in their entirety are sections 2308 and 2309 which explain Catholic doctrine on "Just War":

2308 - All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war. However, as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.

2309 - The, strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force (emphasis theirs) require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation of community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain;

-all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. 

The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgement of those who have responsibility for the common good. 

Using these criteria, you be the judge, do the conditions that brought upon the president's war in Iran satisfy ANY of these conditions, let alone all of them? Let's have a look:

Condition One: MAGA might argue that the potential damage of Iran having a nuclear weapon is an existential threat most directly to Israel and only slightly less to the rest of the world. That threat could be potentially lasting, grave and certain. That last point is debatable but the reality is that in 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) was signed between the United States, Iran and other nations that severely limited Iran's nuclear capabilities, especially in the direction of creating a nuclear weapon. The current president in his first term, as part of his sweeping efforts to undo all the work of his predecessor, tore up the deal, thereby freeing Iran from all of the constraints of the pact. 

Condition Two: We attacked Iran on February 28 while we were in the middle of negotiations with the country.

Condition Three: The peace terms currently on the table, would create an agreement that is essentially the same as the JCPA, the agreement the current president tore up. 

Condition Four: Through this war, we have inflicted great harm to the people of Iran, many of them children. I suppose only God will know in the end if it was graver or not so grave as the evil intended to be eliminated. One thing is certain, despite killing the head of the Iranian regime, the regime is still intact and will very likely take a harder line than before.

Answering the criticism leveled at him, the Pope says he is merely preaching the Gospel, not offering up political opinions. While the MAGA crowd searches for anecdotes to justify their cause, and the president threatens genocide while claiming to be "all about the Gospel", the Pope, not interested in debating any them is doing his job, living the Gospel by spending time in Africa, ministering to the growing Catholic Church there, as well as humbling himself by removing his shoes to visit one of the largest mosques in the world, 

And naturally all the while he is calling for Peace.

On the flip side there's Pete Hegseth the bellicose American Secretary of Defense, who likens himself as the Secretary of War. He got egg all over his face this month when at what was labeled a prayer session at the Pentagon, he read what he called a prayer that was used by the Sandy Hook One Combat Search and Rescue Team who rescued the two US pilots shot down over Iran this month. The "prayer" which he said was meant to resemble a passage from the Old Testament, (Ezekiel 25:17), turned out to be nearly a word-for-word reenactment of a scene from the movie Pulp Fiction. He's right that the words resemble the Bible passage, however the spirit is anything but. 

In the movie, a hit man played by Samuel L. Jackson recites the quasi-biblical passage to one of his victims before he executes him. 

Here you can see a clip of the SoD's "prayer", intercut with the scene from the movie.

 And here's the real Ezekiel 25:17:

And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

Note that in the real verse, which is more accurately reflected in the scene from the movie than in the SoD's version, the one executing vengeance is God, not a human being.

Since they like and refer to the Old Testament so much, the SoD, and all the religious warmongers in this administration should take heed of another verse, this one Deuteronomy 32:35:

It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.

Again, this is God doing the avenging saying in no uncertain terms that vengeance is His job.

Hannity is right, in the Old Testament there is indeed a lot of bloodshed, vengeance and warmongering going on, with God "authorizing, commanding, (and) intervening in battles."

But the essential part is this: according to the Bible it is to be God's will to do these things, not ours.

The warmongers of today like the SoD would argue that the war against Iran is also the will of God, therefore righteous. And that the SoD, the military, and by extension we the American people, whether we want to be or not, are servants following God's will.

Now I have a message to the bible-thumping American warmongers like the SoD starting with this question: 

How do you know that this war is the will of God?

I know this is going to rub a lot of you the wrong way, but it is the truth. The people you folks refer to as "radical Islam" believe the same thing, that God is on their side. Therefore, according to them, each act of violence they commit, sometimes directed at innocent people, what we would call terrorism, is justified. 

How do they know that?

Because they found snippets of text from their Holy Book that back them up.

Just like you.

---

In this remarkable month we have seen two radically different visions of the world.

One vision is the big picture, the view from outer space where our tiny planet, as Buckminster Fuller called it, Spaceship Earth, floats alone in a vast sea of nothingness. All the people alive and all who have ever lived are aboard that spaceship, together as astronaut Christina Koch so beautifully put it, as one crew.

From a religious point of view promoted by Pope Leo, we are all God's children which is precisely why he chose to visit the Grand Mosque of Algiers where he said this:

To seek God is also to recognize the image of God in every creature, in the children of God, in every man and woman created in God’s image and likeness. For us, this means that it is very important to learn to live together with respect for the dignity of every human person.

In this world view, both the religious and the secular agree that while conflict and war are sometimes unavoidable, peace is always preferable and it is our duty as human beings to do everything in our power to promote peace over war.

It is a world view that recognizes that while the resources of our Spaceship Earth are abundant, they are not infinite and we must do everything in our power to protect our planet home for our children, their children and for the generations to come. 

In this vision of the world, people of good will, whether they follow the Pope or not, believe equally that the human race is far stronger when we act together than when we are apart.

In the other world view, division reigns supreme. It is a view that divides the world between the winners and the losers, friends and enemies, the familiar versus the foreign, the nice versus the shithole countries, and us versus them. 

It's a view that promotes fear over trust, that believes the threat to our environment is a hoax. and claims that our God is better than their God.

It is a world ruled (mostly) by men, interested only in acquiring ungodly amounts of power and wealth for themselves and their families, who gain the world but lose their soul by promoting anger, greed, and hatred.

One view values integrity, while the other promotes corruption, deceit, treachery, injustice and all the other terms in that glossary of words that represent the opposite in integrity.

While we still have the power to do so, we are faced with the opportunity to choose the world view we want to guide us into the future, the first or the second.

In my book it's not a difficult choice.

* The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two is the title of a Pulitzer Prize winning book written in 1984 by Studs Terkel, where he interviews a wide range of individuals about their personal experiences surrounding the most devastating war to date in history.

Artemis II

I woke up one day this month at 4AM. Outside our window was a nearly full moon which illuminated the room. None of that is unusual except this time, four brave astronauts, the first to leave Earth's orbit in 54 years, were about to pay a visit to our nearest celestial neighbor. Obviously, I couldn't see them, but I knew I was looking straight at them.

And the thought thrilled me beyond words.

I'm not proud to admit this, but I didn't start paying attention to the Artemis II mission until a day or two before they lifted off from Cape Canaveral on April Fool's Day. How different it was back in the sixties and seventies when not a manned space flight went by without my undivided attention. Perhaps it was my young, impressionable age, or the thought that I was witnessing something that no one had ever done before which was the case with every space flight in that era, that made it all so compelling. 

I guess since we've been there and done all that, this time around was not quite the same.

And yet, maybe it was even better this time.

Artemis II crew clockwise from upper left:
Astronauts Koch, Glover, Weisman and Hansen.

Despite and perhaps because of all the mishegoss going on in our world today, this mission was bloody fantastic. 

The moment I laid eyes on the Moon early that morning, I've had several  questions about the mission and manned space flight in general, some of which have been satisfactorily answered online, others not. 

The first thing that occurred to me as I saw the nearly full Moon was this: if the Moon is full from our perspective, the side of the Moon that is perpetually opposite of us, sometimes mistakenly referred to as the "dark side", would have indeed been in darkness. As the astronauts would be flying around the Moon, why did they plan the mission to take place at a time when the part of the Moon not visible from Earth would be in total darkness?

The answer I got was painfully straightforward: observing the side of the Moon that never faces us was simply not an important part of the mission. We've been sending both manned and unmanned spacecraft there for nearly sixty years now, so its entire surface has been documented, although the Artemis crew did focus on specific areas NASA is interested in for future landing sites. But since the timing of the mission depended upon several factors regarding the relative positions of the Earth and the Moon, the illumination of the opposite side of the lunar surface during the mission was a non-factor.

The next question came up after learning that the Artemis II astronauts at one point in their mission, would break the record for the greatest distance human beings have been from the Earth. Wait a minute I thought, we've already been to the Moon, how is that possible? The answer came as I was watching the mission and learned the astronauts would break the record that was set in 1970 by the crew of Apollo 13. If you recall, that was the ill-fated mission aborted after an explosion in an oxygen tank knocked out the power in the main portion of the spacecraft, the Command Module. 

I remember it well. There obviously was no good time for the tank to explode but if it had to happen, it could not have come at a more opportune time. The spacecraft was on its way to the Moon meaning the Lunar Excursion Module, (the L.E.M. for short), a separate vehicle, was still attached to the disabled Command Module. Fortunately, the astronauts could use the engines aboard the L.E.M. to make the maneuvers necessary to safely return them to Earth. Had the explosion happened as the crew were heading back to Earth after the L.E.M. had been jettisoned, or during the time two of the three astronauts were on the moon separated from the Command Module, all three would have been stranded in space with no chance of survival. 

Nevertheless, it was a harrowing experience as you know if you remember it, read about it, or have seen the movie Apollo 13, which from what I understand, was a reasonably accurate depiction of the event.

Anyway, with the main ship disabled, the crew couldn't just throw on the brakes, make a sudden U Turn and head for home. Rather, with the limited amount of power available to them, they were able to take advantage of the Moon's gravity to help send them back to terra firma. They did that by adjusting their trajectory to send them into a higher lunar orbit than the original plan. That meant instead of the ship being in a position to continuously orbit the Moon, in the higher trajectory the moon's gravity would have caught hold of the spacecraft changing its course but would not have been strong enough to hold on to it, thereby sending the ship back into space toward Earth.  *

That higher orbit explains why Apollo 13 held the distance record for manned space flight until this mission, a record the crew, Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise certainly never intended nor hoped to break. 

But it was the intention of the Artemis II mission all along to make just one pass around the moon, using roughly the same trajectory forced upon Apollo 13, albeit just a little higher, accounting for the new record. Bragging rights aside, of all the magnificent accomplishments of the Artemis II mission, breaking the distance record had to be the least significant. **

We lost Jim Lovell last year but shortly before his death, the only astronaut to have been to the Moon twice without setting foot on it, recorded a heartfelt message to this crew, mentioning them all by name, and welcoming the four of them to "his old neighborhood." It was perhaps the second most poignant moment of the mission. *** You can hear the message here. 

Then of course I wondered, why only one pass around the moon instead of making several orbits as the crew of the first lunar voyage Apollo 8 (Jim Lovell's other trip to the Moon) did in 1968? It reminded me of my father who whenever we traveled anywhere, was content to get out of the car at our destination, have a look around for maybe a moment or two, then get back into the car and drive home. For him, just having been there seemed to be all that mattered. 

It turns out: the main focus of the Artemis II mission was to test the capabilities of the spacecraft, especially its life support systems in outer space, no small matter, so exploration was not the highest priority on the agenda. **** My father would have understood. 

Back to thinking about the recent passing of Jim Lovell who was without question my biggest astronaut hero as a child, I wondered how many of the Apollo astronauts are still around. I could only think of one, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Apollo 11), the second person to walk on the Moon. 

Here's the answer: Of the men who got to walk on the moon, in addition to Aldrin, David Scott (Apollo 15), Charles Duke (Apollo 16), and Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) are still alive at this writing. Mentioned above, Fred Haise was denied the opportunity because of the aborted Apollo 13 mission but got a good view of the Moon. Unfortunately, he was probably too busy wondering if he'd make it home alive to appreciate it. He is still with us, as is Russell Schweickart who was aboard Apollo 9, which featured the first test flight of the L.E.M., but did not leave Earth's orbit.

Which got me thinking about how long it's been since we've been to the Moon. Surely it occurred to me, none of the crew of Artemis II were born yet when Harrison Schmidt and Chicago's own Eugene Cernan were the last people to date to have walked on the moon. Making myself feel really old, I was right.

Here is the crew of Artemis II who have returned to the good earth from their magnificent journey, listed in order from youngest to oldest:

Mission Specialist Christina Koch - 46.

Pilot Victor Glover - 49.

Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen - 50.

Commander Reid Wiseman - 50. 

All spring chickens. But not really, the average age of the Apollo astronauts when they went into space was slightly less than 40. I guess 50 is really the new 40.

Another difference is the racial and gender makeup of the space crews of yesterday and today. The Apollo astronauts sent into space, as well as those of the Gemini and Mercury programs before it, and those to follow for another decade, were all white men. That would not change until 1983. On June 18 of that year, Sally Ride became the first American woman astronaut to go into space. On August 30th of that year, Guy Bluford became the first black American astronaut to go into space. Since that time U.S. space crews have typically been a mixture of genders, races, and nationalities that reflect kind of sort of, the population of this country.

Perhaps the two most notable space missions of the Space Shuttle program were sadly the ones that ended in tragedy, Challenger in January of 1986, and Columbia in February of 2003. Aboard both those two doomed missions were women and people of color who gave their lives for this country, for science, for education and for the passion of exploration. 

One would think in this day and age, hardly anyone would bat an eye, as I didn't, that this mission included one woman and one black man. 

Here I couldn't have been more wrong, people did notice. The issue of D.E.I. in space (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) indeed came up as the current administration has mandated that all U.S. government agencies abandon efforts of hiring based upon gender and race. This means that NASA is now prohibited from even discussing the race or gender of upcoming or future crews that have not yet been assigned. 

It would not surprise me that since the Space Shuttle Program, race and gender have been issues considered in the selection process for space missions for many reasons, not the least of which has been PR. But here's the thing, PR has always been a significant part of NASA's mission, ever since its inception in the 1950s. 

Perhaps if the original scientists of NASA had their way, there would be no astronauts at all as most space exploration, as we've seen over the past seven decades, can be carried out quite nicely by machines that don't place such great demands both physical and emotional on the program that human beings do. Plus, you don't have to worry about returning them to earth.

But nothing captures the public's attention like sending people into space, and to cover the enormous cost of space exploration, NASA needed to get the American public behind it.

It was President Eisenhower who decided that the people who represented this country by risking their lives going into space would be military test pilots. Today that seems like a no-brainer but early on, NASA administrators had all sorts of ideas of what kind of people would make ideal astronauts. The most important qualification in their minds was not being averse to risk. To that end, race car drivers and circus performers were early candidates to be our first astronauts. 

As the early manned space missions were controlled from the ground, the first occupants of spacecraft were essentially just along for the ride, hence there was no requirement of flying skill. I wonder how many people today realize that our country's first astronaut (so to speak) sent into space was not Alan Shepard, but Ham, a four-year-old chimpanzee in January of 1961. Incidentally, Ham didn't get his name until after his groundbreaking flight as the first American great ape in space. That was because NASA officials were worried that if the chimp had a name rather than just a number (No.65), the PR would be much worse if he were killed during the flight.

Naturally, sending highly conditioned and trained military pilots with massive egos to do the work of a chimp, did not sit well with the men who would be our first human beings in space. The seven Mercury astronauts, Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Deke Slayton, Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper, insisted in no uncertain terms that they would have at least some amount of control of their spacecraft (a term insisted upon by the astronauts over the word "capsule" coined by the scientists) as well as a window, not in the original design. Knowing full well their PR importance to the success of the entire space program, the astronauts threatened to go public with their concerns and the NASA administrators ultimately acquiesced. 

It may surprise you that women were indeed considered to be among our first astronauts. Here's a piece I wrote in 2021 about "The Women in Space Program", inspired by Wally Funk, the pilot who had it been another era, may have gotten her chance to have been among the Mercury Seven. 

Spoiler alert, she didn't get that chance because of PR.

Since we live in a much different era. today it should be a no brainer that we have crews that represent our diverse nation. I would challenge anyone to look at the resumes of Koch, Glover, Hansen and Weisman, and not be completely blown away by their pre-mission accomplishments. And I would challenge anyone to assess the three Americans' performances during this mission and not be exceptionally proud to have each of them representing the best of our country. The Canadian people are equally proud no doubt to be represented by London, Ontario's own Jeremy Hansen.

If the anti-DEI crowd is truly sincere that only the most qualified people should be selected for space missions, it will be interesting to see their reaction when a future crew of a high-profile mission consists entirely of women and people of color. 

Finally, beyond PR, why do we send people into space?

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of reasons, but here I'm going to give one example that is both mundane and mind blowing at the same time.

It is a photograph. 

Earthrise from the moon. NASA photograph by Bill Anders,  December 24, 1968

Planet Earth had already been seen and usually photographed from space on every manned mission flown by U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. So when the Apollo 8 astronauts set off on their mission to be the first humans to orbit the Moon, all their attention was focused on our natural satellite or as I prefer to think of it, our companion planet.***** While Moon bound, the astronauts didn't look back, there was no camera mounted behind their spacecraft and naturally, no rear-view mirror. 

Of course they were blown away being the first humans to set eyes upon the side of the Moon we never get to see from Earth, and set about to photograph it in great detail. But they weren't prepared for what they were about to experience. As they flew sixty miles above the lunar surface, Astronaut Bill Anders described the color of the lunar surface as resembling "dirty beach sand." Mile upon mile upon mile of unrelenting dirty beach sand. Then it appeared on the horizon.  

The one spot of brilliant, glorious color in the midst of seemingly endless dirty beach sand and the vast, complete blackness of space.

It was Earth, our home as no one had ever seen it, the entire planet seen from outer space. 

The mission was planned down to the minutest detail but one thing they did not expect was the astronauts' reaction upon seeing Earth from outer space for the first time. This wonderful piece from 2018 includes a recording of the three Apollo 8 astronauts as they first caught sight of our planet. In the recording you can hear three straight shooting 1960s military men, acting like little school kids on Christmas, which indeed it was. 

The crew was equipped with cameras which were intended to photograph the lunar surface. Being film cameras. the number of pictures they could take was limited to the amount of film they had on board. So, when Earth first appeared to them unexpectedly above the lunar horizon, Bill Anders knew he had to fumble around to find the camera loaded with color film while the fleeting moment still presented itself. 

I think we can all relate. 

Then on the recording you can hear Commander Frank Borman, the straightest shooter of them all tell Anders not to take that picture: "it's not on the schedule" he says. From his tone I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure he was joking.

That photograph would prove to be perhaps the most important photograph ever made. Allow me to quote myself:

For the first time we saw our planet exactly as that, a small, fragile, finite world floating in a see of nothingness. We haven’t seen our planet the same since. We once thought of the earth as a bountiful place with infinite resources. Today at least the reasonable among us, see this beautiful planet as our home. I don't think that it was coincidence that the environmental movement gained tremendous steam after we saw those photographs. The last man to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan said: "We went to explore the Moon, and in fact discovered the Earth".

Had the crew of Apollo 8 been robots instead of human beings, that "unscheduled" photograph would probably never have been made, and no one would have been there to testify to one of the most humbling experiences imaginable. 

And wouldn't you know it, it would be Frank Borman of all people, the man of few words and fewer platitudes who was once described by a psychologist as the "most uncomplicated man he ever met",  who stated the experience of seeing the Earth from the Moon in the most profound and dare I say, poetic of terms: 

It's 240,000 miles away. It was small enough you could cover it with your thumbnail. The dearest things in life were back on the Earth-- my family, my wife, my parents. They were still alive then. That was, for me, the high point of the flight from an emotional standpoint.

And now we're back to the Moon and we have a new set of pictures. As someone who knows a thing or two about photography, I'll use a term that I hope isn't too technical here.

Those pictures are fucking unbelievable.

Honestly, I could write a book about the hundreds of photographs I've seen so far made by the Artemis II astronauts but fortunately there's a video that does a better job than I could.

Here it is. Watch it, it's well worth the 30 or so minute run time.

And now we have a new generation of explorers, one that isn't afraid to let down their guard and show their emotions. A good place to witness that is this link to the crew's appearance in Houston on Saturday, April 11, 2026.

I've gone on way too long here but I'd like to close with something Christina Koch said during that appearance the day after they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean last Friday:

Several years ago I was giving a speech and I was doing my usual talk about crew and crewmates and teamwork and someone asked the question: "What makes a crew? What is different about a crew from a team?"

 And I was like, I got this, I open my mouth confidently to tell then everything I knew about being a crewmate, and everything that came out of my mouth was completely without value....

But the last ten days I've gotten a little bit of a better answer on that question.

A crew is a group that is in it all the time no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, but gives grace that holds accountable.

A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, (here she turns around to look at her three crewmates on the stage), beautifully, dutifully linked.

So, when we saw tiny earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And honestly, what struck me wasn't necessarily just earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging, undisturbingly in the universe.

(At this point she pauses briefly to gather her thoughts after being overcome with emotion.)

So, I may have not learned -- I know I haven't learned -- everything that this journey has yet to teach me. But there's one new thing I know, and that is Planet Earth, you are a crew. Thank you.

So, to answer the question posed above, machines are perfect tools for gathering data to better learn about our universe. We send people into space to bring back art and poetry, to better learn about ourselves.

NOTES:

* I made it sound simple, but that correction in trajectory required a precise series of engine burns to get the spacecraft into the correct position to first enter the Moon's orbit, then be "slingshot" back to Earth. It took ten minutes for an IBM 360 mainframe computer the size of a room and then some, to come up with the set of instructions for the correct sequence of engine burns which had to be fed one burn at a time in order for the astronauts to manually execute them correctly. Of course, I had to see how that would compare to a modern computer. Care to guess how long it would take my cellphone to make the same calculations? A small fraction of a second. We may not have been to the Moon in 54 years, but we've done a few other things in that time.

** I was watching live coverage of the mission on NASA's YouTube channel at the time the Artemis was supposed to break Apollo 13's distance record. The time until breaking the record was displayed on the upper left corner of the screen and I wondered what would happen once that clock counted down to zero. The answer is nothing, not one of the crew nor anyone at Mission Control in Houston seemed to mention it. What did happen was this...

***Unquestionably the most poignant moment of the mission was when Jeremy Hansen announced that three members of the crew decided to name a previously unnamed lunar crater Carroll, in honor of the late wife of the fourth astronaut, their commander Reid Weisman.  

**** Nonetheless, there was still a good amount of exploration putting the astronauts' valuable time in space to good use.

***** Of the nine known planets in our solar system (yes, I'm counting Pluto), six of them have moons, or celestial bodies that revolve about them. All of the moons, except ours, are significantly smaller than the planet they orbit.  Our moon is about one quarter the size of Earth meaning that if you were to view the Earth and our moon together, say from Mars, the two are close enough in size to appear as a double planet.