A rocket either soars or crashes and those family members weep, the spectrum of emotions raw and unabashed in what they construe in their hearts as reality.
The spacecraft Artemis soared and pierced the lizards throat of the gravity well while captivating society at least for a moment possible bereft of tenderness in exploring the darkside of the moon.
As advances in virtual reality and AI dominate the frantic news cycle and a consequence of a 15-second societal attention span, the dramatic development and splashdown of the Artemis II rocket and capsule supports the axiom that experiencing life outside the confines of a softscreen is a direct route to contentment.
In the notable instance of truancy and activity without achievement, a theme that plagues the younger generations, the entire lifecycle of the mission which took American astronauts past the threshold of the Apollo program after nearly a six decade void, the world now awaits the next enthralling space race chapter. It was 2026 a space diversity, a Calvin Klein ad of propaganda and science a perfect fit for a Vanity Fair article.
With the ingenuity spawned by a group of collaborators and NASA, the Chinese are now on the clock for their own brand and contribution of constructing a tiny miniscule piece of the daunting bridge of bringing mankind to the brink of the solar system. While the playground and the callous spookiness of the stars is the ultimate goal, small steps are the emphasis of the Information Age era of entitlement and sentimentalism.
As the success of the latest mission space missions representing humans in limbo resounded and verified the will to explore vulnerability, a message was sent globally a message that failure was not an option even amid the deterrent optics and blatant culture of smart goggles that replace juice boxes and blankets on certain college campuses behind walls shielded by ivy.
While the arsenal of nuclear weapons in Russia have now been rendered impotent to execute a defiant attack that would wipe humanity out and resetting and weaponizing the hierarchy of the global chess players of the military-industrialized complex, the instability of dissident nations continues to trend with the viral headlines of the industrialized digital social media nodes of factories.
The launch of Artemis II executing a precise return to terra firma in an ocean landing off the Florida coast and the subsequent promises at least for now alleviated the muted fears that humanity still has a buffer zone preventing the destruction of continents and nations if not the world. As the mission profile does not fit the narrative for propagandized grandeur and pomp and circumstance, at least in the short-term memory describing intellectual malfeasance, an interstellar trip at least softens the toxic divide that currently plagues humankind, the thundering rockets a universal reminder that being alone in the cosmos is more of an indictment to fate rather than a condition.
The US, China, Russia and even India are the future for off-planet exploration or realizing the dream of extracting a Helium isotope that through nuclear fusion could provide a boost in electricity for decades. However, the cost-benefit analysis at least at this point induces skepticism in light of the record number of digital and streaming subscribers transfixed by Artemis II once again that going viral is not an affliction, but an indication that global engagement is still possible despite the 15-second attention span of the younger generations. The battlefield has now shifted from an abundance of ICBM missile silos to servers and devices in summoning the space race from irrelevance to the prominence of an Olive branch of hope.