Looking Up

Artemis II Gives Us A Moment

Let’s spend a few days in space, shall we?

In college, my buddy Scott had a telescope. We were total sci-fi space nerds back then (now as well) and would occasionally go out at night to check out the moon or a planet.

One time, and I can’t remember why we went out - maybe a comet - we set up the telescope at the end of one of those empty cul-de-sacs that were becoming more and more common in our growing suburb. The place had a road and lots of flat empty lots, but hadn’t yet been overrun with mcmansions and street lights. Perfect for the telescope.

This was summer so it must have been later, nine or ten in the evening. We had a little cooler, Pepsi and chips, you know how that goes. We set up the telescope and turned our eyes to the stars.

I’d say we’d been set up for maybe ten minutes before the cops showed up.

Two cars. Lights flashing. It annoyed us because with the lights on like that we couldn’t see the sky. I think maybe they expected us to run, but we just sat there as they approached. I was sitting on the cooler munching my Cheetos.

The lead officer looked over our set up, shined a light on the telescope and then on us.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked. We weren’t drinking or smoking, so I think he was honestly puzzled.

But before I could respond, Scott said, “Observing, officer.” This made me giggle and I think it got the officer mad.

“Observing what?” he said somewhat gruffly. And I swear to you this wasn’t planned, but both Scott and I pointed up to the sky.

The cops also looked up at the sky. There was a very long pause. I ate some more chips.

“Ok, well, be careful,” the cop said and they just walked away. A few minutes later and they were gone, leaving us in the dark again with our stars.

Artemis II splashed safely back down to Earth today after a successful lunar orbit and such an endeavour is easy to dismiss - costly, we’ve been there before, we have so so many things to worry about here.

But on the other hand, we are also desperately in need of, well, hope.

Hope that human ingenuity can still function. That we can get along enough to make something wonderful happen. That awe exists. That we can and should (often) consider how tiny we humans are in the grand scheme of everything. That we should be humble. That we are stardust.

They went up there. They splashed back down. We got to observe it all. We need a win. I’ll take it.