You Should Be More Excited About the Artemis Moon Missions

C’mon, it’s the moon, people!

Last June, I took my son Wynn to visit the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. He has an interest in science and, like any eight-year-old, wants to go space, but I do wonder if the trip was more for me than it was for him. It is difficult not to be discouraged by the current state of the world, and fretful for its future. There is much value in the perspective of looking toward the heavens, and for recognizing the limitless possibilities of what human beings are capable of, if we can just stop screaming at each other all the time. I came away from the place feeling renewed, invigorated: Like there was a chance all this might turn out all right.

But mostly: I got really excited that we were going to the moon. Like most Americans, I had not heard about the Artemis project, at least until I visited the Space Center. The Artemis project, which began under the Trump administration and was continued by the Biden administration (one of the few projects to survive the transition), is explicit about its aims: It wants to return human beings to the moon. It wants them to be Americans. It wants to put the first woman on the moon, and the first person of color on the moon. It wants us to go back.