Hope For Mankind

I wasn't old enough to remember the Apollo missions. I grew up firmly in the years of the Space Shuttle as it shuttled astronauts and equipment into low earth orbits. While fascinating, it always made me wonder what it has been like for my parent's generation to sit there and watch in real time as man stepped onto another celestial object for the first time. It must have been a mixture of excitement and pride at human ingenuity. Then we lost one of those shuttles, the Challenger, and the world mourned collectively at the loss. The program continued on until the Columbia was also lost and then the writing on the wall became more pronounced. What had been routine to send people into orbit was now in jeopardy of stopping all together. What came next was a scramble and as a result, I was pretty much resigned that seeing mankind go beyond low earth orbit was not something that was ever going to happen in my lifetime. 

Five days ago, that changed with the launch of the Artemis II mission which I was able to watch in real time one evening from the comfort of my easy chair. It is so easy to see a launch and not truly understand the scale of what we are sending into orbit. Only when one has visited Cape Canaveral and stood beside the business end of a Saturn V rocket tipped on it's side and laying 20 feet over your head and the other end isn't even visible because it is so far away, does one fully appreciate mankind's accomplishment. I am in awe.

Yesterday evening, I was in awe again as the Orion capsule started slipping behind the dark side of the moon. With the technology of today, I could stream the event in real time with multiple videos of the outside of the capsule along with a video stream of the astronauts inside the capsule. I had the video stream pulled up onto my television set and watched for quite awhile as they neared the point where the Earth would appear to set into the moon's surface. Above is a photo I grabbed about a minute before that happened. The crescent shape you see it actually Earth. 

Those of us left behind on that shining crescent about to disappear behind the moon may be at war with other nations and even at war within ourselves politically, but we still have the ability when we come together for a few seconds to send mankind farther out into space than we have ever before. 

It leaves me feeling hopeful this morning.