Four brave Americans (okay, three Americans and a Canadian) are strapped into a capsule on top of a 322-foot rocket, ready to slingshot around the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. NASA’s Artemis II mission launches Wednesday evening from Kennedy Space Center, and we should all be bursting with pride — assuming the thing doesn’t blow a hydrogen gasket like it did the last two times they tried this.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will spend ten days flying 252,000 miles from Earth — smashing Apollo 13’s distance record by about 4,000 miles. When they come screaming back into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, the heat shield will hit 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Koch joked that her husband won’t even be able to call and ask where she keeps the good silverware.
Now let’s talk about the bill. Congress — the same geniuses who can’t pass a budget on time to save their lives — managed to turn what should’ve been a $5 billion rocket launching in 2016 into a $93 billion money pit launching a full decade late. The SLS rocket costs $4.1 billion every single time it flies. Per launch! You could buy every member of Congress a solid gold toilet and still have change left over.
“Congress locked in this design decision made for a completely different spacecraft in a completely different era,” said Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society. Translation: 535 politicians who think Wi-Fi comes from the cloud told actual rocket scientists which parts to bolt onto a spaceship. And then they wonder why it leaks hydrogen.
Speaking of which — those hydrogen leaks that delayed this mission twice trace all the way back to the Space Shuttle program. Hydrogen molecules are tiny little escape artists, kind of like the $260 million in taxpayer dollars USAID funneled to George Soros’s outfits. NASA has wrestled with this exact problem for forty years, but sure, let a bunch of congressmen who can’t operate their own iPhones dictate the engineering specs.
Wiseman, who’s 50 and a single dad, sat his kids down before suiting up and walked them through the will and trust documents. “If anything happens to me, here’s what’s going to happen to you.” Then he climbed on top of a controlled explosion pointed at the Moon. The man assigned himself this mission when he ran the astronaut office, and if you’re in charge of picking who rides the rocket to the Moon and you DON’T pick yourself, you’re a fool. God bless him.
Glover is bringing a Bible and his wedding rings aboard. Koch will become the first woman to leave low-Earth orbit — an actual accomplishment, unlike the DEI participation trophies Democrats hand out like candy. Hansen, the Canadian, shouted “Allons-y!” at the press conference, which is French for “let’s go.” Our neighbors to the north sent one guy and he immediately started speaking French. Buddy, read the room — we’re going to the Moon, not Montreal.
Meanwhile, 90-year-old Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt — the last human to walk on the Moon — offered this gem: “Be ready for anything unexpected, but have a great time.” That’s the most badass thing a 90-year-old has said since Clint Eastwood told an empty chair to shut up at the RNC. Meanwhile, half the kids in this country need a therapy appointment if their Wi-Fi drops for ten minutes.
We built this rocket despite Washington, not because of it. Four people are about to ride a bomb around the Moon and splash down in the Pacific, and the only thing the clowns on Capitol Hill contributed was a decade of delays and $93 billion in cost overruns. God bless the engineers who actually built the thing. Godspeed to the crew.
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