Should We All Take Pride in Artemis II?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]I have something I want to show you.

[00:00:02]It's back here behind Superman, Batman, and Robin on my fireplace mantle.

[00:00:08]There's just a limited amount of space to display things, and I had to make a choice as to who would be in the front row. And I chose the world's finest. But anyway, let me get them out of the way for the moment so I can show you my commemorative Apollo program glasses. These were a gift many years ago from my now ex-wife, but a beautiful, thoughtful gift that she got me one year. I can't remember if it was Christmas or a birthday or what, but I I treasure them. And that one that I just showed you was Apollo 11. This one is Apollo 13. Sorry, Albine. No, Apollo 12 glass. But this is Apollo 13.

[00:00:52]Of course, the mission that was almost a terrible disaster but turned into an unimaginable triumph. And then this one is my personal favorite. This is Apollo 14. And the reason why Apollo 14 is my favorite is because that was the mission commanded by Alan Shepard who was the first astronaut whose name I actually knew. Uh he was the first astronaut to go into space during the Mercury program. He was the first American in space and he did not actually orbit the Earth during that Mercury mission, but he was the the first American in space. And that flight took place on my birthday just, you know, about 20 years earlier before I was born, but but the date was my birthday. And and Alan Shepard has always been a hero of mine. And then he got to go to the moon and walk on the moon for Apollo 14. So, that has always been sentimentally my favorite moon mission, my favorite Apollo mission. And the reason I bring all of this up is the other day I did a video where I mostly talked about the election in Hungary, but at the beginning of the video I talked about the Aremis 2 mission that recently was completed and those four astronauts are now back safely on Earth.

[00:02:09]They did a flyby of the moon where they went all the way to the moon and they actually because of their orbital trajectory they flew further from Earth than any other astronauts than any other human beings ever have and they came back and it's just a just such a wonderful thing and it's been such a focal point of joy and inspiration since it happened and it's been really great for me as someone who as you can tell is an old astronaut nerd and NASA nerd um to see people getting excited about NASA again, getting excited about space exploration and and human space exploration. It's just been great. And during that video, I mentioned that I do take a little bit of pride knowing that that was a NASA mission, that was, you know, primarily an American mission. And I I allow myself a little bit of patriotism and a little bit of uh nationalistic pride in the Aremis 2 mission even though as I acknowledged in the earlier video there was a Canadian on the astronaut team. And of course the the spacecraft itself contains a components that some of which were built by the European Space Agency. And human space flight is definitely an international effort and is a great um symbol and example of of international cooperation. And that you don't want to lose sight of that. That's something that should be noted and celebrated.

[00:03:31]But, you know, just as an American, I felt a little, you know, a twinge of pride, a a sense of, "Oh, look at what we did." Right?

[00:03:40]And I got a comment on that video from someone who said, "It doesn't make any sense to take pride in something that you had no part in. You weren't any of you weren't on that mission. You weren't one of those astronauts. You didn't help to train those astronauts. you didn't work on any of the contractors that built that spacecraft or designed that spacecraft. You had nothing to do with it. It makes no sense. You should not be taking pride in it. And I just wanted to talk about that a little bit because I think it's important to understand that there are different types of pride that you can have in things. And the pride that I feel regarding the Aremis 2 mission is definitely not the same kind of pride I feel in something that I have made. If I if I personally made something that I thought was good, if I wrote if I wrote a story that I thought was good or I made a video that I thought was good and and it was wellreceived and it was successful and or it was just a good piece of work that that I myself just as the creator thought represented my point of view and my skills and what I wanted to accomplish and whatever and it was something I could be proud of. That kind of pride is different from the kind of pride I feel about the Aremis mission.

[00:05:07]But that doesn't mean that the pride I feel in the Aremis mission is wrong or that I shouldn't feel that kind of pride or that it's illogical or of no use or anything like that. And I feel like the commenter who made that remark is taking too narrow of a view and maybe a little bit of of too literal and too heartless of a view because the kind of pride that you take in something like a space mission, something that is that is not yes it is an accomplishment of the particular people who directly contributed to it, but it also feels like an accomplishment of our society, of our community, of our country, and and more broadly than that, of our species. Like, that's kind of what I was talking about when I mentioned it in my previous video. You look at the Aremis astronauts doing that thing, going to the moon, traveling further from Earth than people have ever traveled, and just performing with such excellence, like doing everything that they needed to do. It was just a textbook mission and they they were so good at their jobs and such an inspiration. And the kind of pride you take in that as someone who was not directly involved, it's not I did that or I helped to do that. It's one of us did that.

[00:06:42]You know, it's not even we did that. It kind of is. You can think of it that way like we as as people we as human beings did that but it's more just it's a sense of pride of oh one of us did that a human being did that a group of human beings did that that's remarkable what incredible potential we have as a species look at what we can accomplish and I think when you look at it that way there is great value in that kind of pride I understand nationalistic pride can go wrong in a lot of different ways.

[00:07:21]Patriotism and nationalism can be very easily corrupted and put to nefarious uses and destructive uses. That's been demonstrated god in this country over and over and over again. Not to mention other countries all around the world throughout history. So, I get the instinct to sort of push back against any hint of nationalism or patriotism because it can be used and turned into such a bad thing. But in the right circumstances and in in in a reasonable amount, I feel like that kind of pride can be a good thing. If let's say a country was uh had been colonized and was repressed and the people of the country had lived under the boot of of an occupier or a colonizer. In that case, an oppressed people, an oppressed country feeling a sense of a sense of nationalism, a sense of pride in who they are as a people, a pride in their culture, a pride in who they are as contrasted with the people that were oppressing them. I think that kind of nationalism can be very good and very healthy and very unifying and it can bring people together and encourage people to to fight for change and to fight for a better future for themselves for their country for you know subsequent generations. In that case I think nationalism and patriotism can be a good thing. doesn't negate all of the many many ways it can be a very bad thing, but there are ways in which it can be a good thing and it can aid good purposes. It can aid beneficial activities. And pride in a moon mission is kind of like that. Pride in a moon mission that makes you feel like we are capable of so much more than what we have been doing. It's something that reminds us of what we can really accomplish when we collectively decide that a particular goal is worth striving for.

[00:09:34]When we marshall our resources, look at what we accomp Look at what the what NASA and its collaborators around the world and the Aremis astronauts and all of their support teams. Look what they accomplished with a tiny tiny fraction of global resources. Hell, of national resources. You know how what a minuscule sliver of the United States federal budget NASA is? It's teeny teeny tiny.

[00:10:04]It's it's outrageously small. It's scandalously small. Funding for NASA should be many, many, many, many times what it is. If you compare the amount of funding NASA gets, the pittance that NASA operates on, and compare that to the funding that is given to the United States military, it's obscene.

[00:10:25]It's obscene.

[00:10:27]And yet, look at what NASA has been able to do with that tiny sliver.

[00:10:33]Look what they've been able to accomplish.

[00:10:35]Look at the the amazing human beings that have flown to the moon and come back safely to us here on Earth with just a a a tiny fraction an iota of the potential available resources. We get together and we pull our resources just a little bit and look what we can accomplish.

[00:10:58]And I think being proud of that encourages us to want to see more of that and to prioritize things like that and to say, "Yeah, look what we can do.

[00:11:09]Let's do that again and let's do that same sort of thing for other purposes.

[00:11:15]Look at all the problems that we face that seem insurmountable, that seem unsolvable, or at the very least that we are always told are unsolvable. Oh, poverty, we're never going to solve that. Oh, universal health care. Oh, crime, gun control, education, free education for everybody, free college for Oh, it's never going to happen. We can't do it. It's impossible. It's unrealistic.

[00:11:41]Look at what we just did. Look at what NASA just did with that much compared to how much there is. And you're telling me that all of these other problems that we face, which granted are huge problems, are logistically and financially much bigger problems than sending one lunar mission out, right? I'm not saying that they're equivalent in terms of the amount of effort that will be needed to address them. But look at what we can do. Literally, the sky is not the limit.

[00:12:10]Like, we can go beyond that.

[00:12:13]and having things like Artemis 2 and taking pride feeling like you're a part of that, even if you're not literally a part of it, even if you're not directly a part of it, feeling like that, but but part of that belongs to you, that those astronauts were doing that for you in some way.

[00:12:34]and having that sense of connection and having that sense of belonging and having that sense of we're all in this together and look at what we can do if we really get together and do something like that that's encouraging and that helps people to realize that we can actually do more to address these other problems that we face. Creating that sense of community, creating that sense of shared accomplishment and shared responsibility is a good thing, is a positive thing, and I would say is an incredibly necessary thing because if we are going to eventually do something about poverty, about here in the United States, gun violence, about the political corruption that has run rampant through our political institutions for the last, I mean, for a long time, but especially for the last several years that has threatened our democracy, that has threatened our society itself. If we're going to do something about that, if we're going to do something about giving people access to affordable health care, or better education, more access to education, or doing something about really achieving and defending racial equality and gender equality and equality for LGBTQ people and equality and and and fair opportunities and fair treatment for immigrants and refugees and all of these other things, all of these Other things that we are not addressing now that we need to address climate change, environmental catastrophes, all of these huge problems that we need to address.

[00:14:08]If we are ever going to address them and have a hope of making a difference, let alone solving them someday, we need to have a sense that we are all in this together. Barack Obama used to say, "People need to feel like they have skin in the game." And he wasn't always talking about this thing I'm talking about here, but that idea, a sense of ownership, a sense of community, a sense of unity.

[00:14:35]We need that.

[00:14:37]We need that. We need to know that we're in this together and that together we can make a difference. We can fight this. We can fix this. Whatever this is, we can do this. Whatever this is, we can accomplish this goal, whatever it may be.

[00:14:51]We need to know that we're all in this together. when we need to feel like we're all in this together and that we as a group can accomplish anything.

[00:15:02]And looking at something like the Aremis 2 mission and taking pride in that, feeling like, yeah, we did that, that's a good thing. It may not make sense from a purely mathematical perspective.

[00:15:19]It's a little philosophical.

[00:15:22]It's a little emotional.

[00:15:25]It's a little poetic.

[00:15:28]But I don't see those as downsides. I don't see those as bad things. I see those as parts of human nature that are just as important and just as useful and just as necessary as anything else. So, you feel how you want to feel about it.

[00:15:46]I'm still going to be proud of it.