Two wheels, Moon shot

Yesterday a large box was delivered to my place. In it was an e-bike I bought for my girlfriend. The thought is she will be able to use it to accompany me on some of my EUC rides. I need to put it together yet. From the video I saw it should not be a very difficult task to do so. It will be fun to have her along for the ride once in awhile.

Today Artemis II is scheduled to launch. Setting a launch date of April Fool’s day seems less than well thought out to me. This will be the first time astronauts will have circled the moon since the early 70s which is crazy. The program has been riddled with setbacks, delays and large cost overruns. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2016, yes, 10 years ago. The intent of the program is to establish a lunar base at some point, which again, was supposed to have been well underway at this point.

Much like the original Apollo program, the Artemis program is mostly motivated due to competition with another country. Back then it was the Soviet Union, now, it’s China who is pushing to establish a presence on the moon. There is a lot of pressure for this mission to go well. It’s been a long time since NASA has been in the spotlight. SpaceX has gotten almost all of the attention since the shuttle program was put to rest.

Being a space enthusiast I am very interested in this event however it seems like I am in the minority. In this 6 second attention span society we live in I bet you would be lucky to get 10% of the population that even knows what Artemis is. I think it would be amazing if we had a consistent human inhabited base on the moon. I hope today’s launch is the first step in making that a reality.

Happy April Fool’s day. I heard we were celebrating by having the biggest fool of all embarrass himself and the nation once again by doing a live address where he will explain how bigly we are winning the war. I saw a post on X from a former huge Trump supporter that not only voted for him three times but donated heavily to his campaign. Like many he is finally done with the circus and never ending stream of lies and broken promises. He ended his post by saying “The only ones left supporting him are MAGA always Trumpers who place the man above the policies and our country.” Amen. That is what cult members do, blind, undying obedience. Just ask Jim Jones followers that drank the poison Kool Aid.