Lost in Space

I've been riding the MoonJoy Train for two weeks

The past two weeks, I’ve had my eyes glued to the NASA live stream. Like so many other people, I was mildly obsessed with the Artemis II mission. I made my boyfriend watch the take off and I watched coverage all day leading up to it.

Watching such a cool experience has relit my love for space travel, though I don’t want to go up into space (I hate flying on planes, I can’t even imagine being blasted off in a rocket). Space exploration really feels like the biggest and best of humanity.

Photo by Terence Burke on Unsplash

Looking back at my childhood, before I was a teenager, but still old enough to remember big events, there are always two that stick out: 9/11 and the Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster.

I was seven when 9/11 hit and to this day, it trips me out a little that none of my siblings remember 9/11, they were all too young. None of them probably remember Columbia either. But I do.

Didn’t understand it at the time, but I remember. My dad took me to the YMCA to sign up for basketball and they had the local news on. The news had coverage of the Columbia. I grew up in North Texas, in the suburbs of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and that’s where a lot of Columbia broke up on reentry, so the images you see even to this day, those happened in the sky I looked up at.

That’s probably why it stuck with me so much, and I remember asking my dad if we’d say “We remember 02-01-2003” like we did for 9/11. He told me we probably wouldn’t and he was right. Sometimes the Columbia disaster feels like something no one remembers besides me.

But it sparked something in me - this fascination with space exploration. I remember watching the last space shuttle launch, trying to explain to my younger siblings, who were eleven and ten at the time, why this was such a big deal. We weren’t going to space anymore.

I remember being in my car in May 2020, when two astronauts were launched to the ISS with a Crew Dragon capsule. In the grips of the pandemic, seeing something as cool as space flight again. While I am a total scardy cat of heights (or of falling, I guess you could say), there is something about space flight that is so incredible.

Then I read Atmsophere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which is about astronauts falling in love, and the reinvigorated my love of space flight. I watched every documentary I could find about Challenger and Columbia to understand how they happened and what

Science has advanced so far, we can break the barrier of the atmosphere to see what lies beyond our blue dot. As a writer, I often think that half of my job is to explore feelings and moments in time. Space is exploring the unknown, the beyond. Exploring moments or feeling, those are things we know, we just find new layers to.

Only so many people have explored beyond our world.

Not only is exploration an incredible feat, but just launching people into space - that is insane (in the best ways possible). To defy gravity, the atmosphere - it’s a huge collaboration. It requires people to be the best at what they do. As someone who feels like a jack of all trades, seeing people who absolutely kick ass at what they do and they are incredible at that one thing, it’s inspiring.

For as many moments these past few years that required an eye roll or an “what the hell is happening here?”, seeing Artemis II launch, see the moon and splash down safely, with such precision.

It makes me proud to be a human, to see such collaboration - the best of the best - working together for a common cause. It shows we can be better than just what we are now - that we can strive for greatness. That humans can work together for something bigger than ourselves.

We need more moments like this, because we all deserve to excited about humanity and for what we can do.

And I hope that we see more of this - not just exploration, I know we have more Artemis missions are on the way. But this sense of pride of the incredible things humans can do when we strive for our best.

Also, I definitely want a Rise plushie.