Moon Joy

 Copy that. During the Artemis 2 mission I was glued to NASA’s livestream from launch to splashdown. It was fascinating to watch very competent astronauts and eggheads cooly pulling off orbital mechanics in real time, and speaking to each other with the love language of space travel: “Systems are go, Affirm, Copy that, Roger, Nominal…” Their calm voices understated their herculean tasks.

The sights and sounds were a pleasant throwback to the Apollo days.  Mission Control is still a massive room with desks and computers manned by flight controllers with special designations: CAPCOM, FIDO, GUIDO, EECOM… And there is still that cool little beep on COMS right before Houston calls up to the astronauts. 

The nostalgia for me runs deep, as I was a child of the space age, born under the sign of the blazing payload. Gordon Cooper rode a rocket for NASA’s Mercury program and Soviet Cosmonaut Valentia Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times while I was in utero. 

Imprinted with the space race, I emerged into a world that pointed me skyward. Nights in flyover country were dark and full of stars, the Milky Way visible from the front porch. Playing outside I occasionally felt the visceral shock of a sonic boom as a test pilot zoomed overhead.  

Motifs of flight or rocket explosions were everywhere ---on signs, advertisements, packaging and architecture. Satellites, starbursts, parabolas….even the high school in my small Kansas town had a parabolic awning, referencing the flight trajectory of rockets. 

NASA had told us that space exploration would improve our lives for the better and it was true. I was eating breakfast cereal shaped like flying saucers, and watching TV shows like The Jetsons, I Dream of Jeanie and the Thunderbirds. Even Don Knotts went to space in the movie The Reluctant Astronaut. 

And then there was Major Astro, who appeared on a TV show for kids that broadcast out of a Wichita station.  At the end of every show, Major Astro signed off in a cheery space vernacular, saying, "Happy Orbits, boys and girls ... Everything will be A-Okay and all systems will be go!"

I thought Major Astro was an actual astronaut, but was a little disillusioned when he visited our school festival and didn't bring his space ship. (Although I had worried about where he would park it.) 

Now more than 50 years later, I've been more than a little invested in the real-life Artemis 2 astronauts' journey to the moon. They were ascending the heavens on my soul's behalf, leaving the earth by way of turbulent G forces, and enduring the fiery hells of re-entry, while I remained on earth’s surface. Good times. 

IMAGES:

Artemis 2 Commander Reid Wiseman peeks out at the moon through the window of the Orion capsule (2026, NASA)

The Orion space capsule heads to the moon (2026, NASA)

Don Knotts in The Reluctant Astronaut

Major Astro (source unknown)

Shot of the moon from the Artemis 2 crew (2026, NASA)