Today, in the year 2026, we can definitively state that humanity has reached farther into the stars than ever before. This is an accomplishment that should have filled us with joy, had the world in a vise grip, as we watched this month the astronauts of Artemis II explore strange new worlds and establish the next step in human exploration. And yet…reactions are decidedly mid. Ranging from apathy to disgust, the long-ago Space Race that prompted us to shoot for the stars has ended, replaced now by elites who view space as a new asset to obtain, a jangling set of keys placed before a bald-headed multi-conglomerate of a baby. This is no longer the age of Apollo but of Blue Origin, and his sister, Artemis, has a lot of work to do if we hope to change that.
I do not want to minimize the efforts of the talented people at NASA (Which includes several Hopkins alumni) and what they accomplished. Artemis II, our first lunar flyby in over 50 years, launched this month and set a new precedent for what humans can achieve in regard to space travel, paving the way for future lunar surface missions. The first crewed flight beyond Earth’s orbit since 1972, it is the first step in a rejuvenated effort to establish a foothold for humanity beyond Earth. We were granted crystal-clear images of both Earth and the moon from angles we had never seen before, with a quality that far exceeds the capabilities of the cameras we had during the Apollo program. In addition, our newly tested astronauts were granted a taste of the overview effect, a well-documented phenomenon among many space travelers, as their perspective on humanity shifted radically, no longer seeing borders or divisions among nations but just our home, a pale blue dot against the cosmic backdrop.
Given how difficult and precarious space travel can and has been in its relatively brief history, by all means, Artemis II was a success and seems to be establishing an optimistic precedent for future missions. Yet, when I tried talking about it with a friend of mine over dinner the other day, their reaction caught me off guard.
“We went to the moon?”
Initially, this had me disheartened. To think that we’ve become so desensitized by the over proliferation of media that monumental events like these no longer sit in the cultural zeitgeist. They get their 15 minutes of fame, and then we quickly move on to the next thing. The more I sat on it, however, the more I realized that this wasn’t necessarily an irrational position to have. The Space Race of the 1960s, which prompted our first trip to the moon, was driven by an attempt to prove American excellence during the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Contrasting with today, public perception of space travel seems to regard it less as an altruistic endeavor to improve humanity and more as a sandbox for the wealthy to play in.
Companies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX have garnered many headlines over the last few years, headed by billionaires with the intent of exploring the unknown for commercial gain. At a conservative estimate of $200,000 per ticket, the biggest people to make headlines exploring beyond the atmosphere in the last few years haven’t been our scientists and engineers at NASA and other space exploration programs, but celebrities like Jeff Bezos, Katy Perry, and William Shatner, among others. These trips, while wonderful photo opportunities, do little in terms of scientific advancements and have reshaped the public perception of what space travel is meant to accomplish.
In addition, to put it bluntly, the world is currently facing a variety of phenomena that were not present during the original Apollo missions that have shifted public attention. Issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and the plethora of international conflicts have many people’s attention spans full, leaving little room for anything else. From this, we can see that the days of eagerly standing by the television to see shuttles breaking through the atmosphere are long gone, replaced by a new world that’ll briefly see the event posted online or recapped in an online video essay, before returning to the many other issues that keep our attention grounded on Earth.
In truth, what the future holds for humanity and its aim for the stars is unknown. There is still a lot of good that can be accomplished, as space exploration has led to many technological advancements that have benefited us. In addition, even these for-profit space programs have yielded some good, as they have allowed people who otherwise never would have been granted the opportunity to experience a phenomenon that changes our perception of what it means to be a human on the third rock from the sun. In any case, it seems likely that Artemis II will not be our last foray into space, and it remains to be seen whether we will make new advancements that grab headlines more than the Apollo missions did all those years ago.