William Ray Brown

JUST IN: Artemis II crew experiences issues with Microsoft Outlook on their way to the Moon, asks ground crew for assistance.

Even in darkness, we glow. In this image of Earth taken by the Artemis II crew, we can see the electric lights of human activity. In the lower right, sunlight illuminates the limb of the planet.

After watching Artemis, I want to leave you with some things to think on: On a clear night, the sky looks like a boundary. It’s never been one. Every generation inherits the decision about how far to go. Sixty-three years ago, President JFK stood in Houston and told forty thousand people we would land a man on the moon before the decade was out. The rocket didn’t exist. No one could say with certainty a human body would survive the journey. He said it anyway. And we accomplished it. We have reached that kind of moment once more, and this time the destination beyond the moon already has our footprints on it. Mars sits two hundred forty million miles away. Our machines have already crawled its surface, read its soil, and confirmed that water once moved across that terrain in rivers wide enough to see from space. What remains is the act of going, and the courage to go as people who understand they are not just traveling to a place but starting a civilization.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ That is the weight this generation carries. The people who first set boots into the soil of Mars will decide what humanity brings with it. Not just the tools and the science, but the values, the hard-won understanding of what breaks a society and what holds one together across centuries. We know what foundational mistakes cost. Every civilization that ever crossed into the unknown left marks that outlasted the people who made them. That knowledge is something no prior generation of explorers carried when they left the shore. We have it. We have the hardware. What we need now is the will to match what we have already built, and the wisdom to send people to Mars carrying more than the means to survive. The moon was once the ceiling. It became the floor. Mars is waiting. And so are we.

After watching Artemis, I want to leave you with some things to think on: On a clear night, the sky looks like a boundary. It’s never been one. Every generation inherits the decision about how far to go. Sixty-three years ago, President JFK stood in Houston and told forty thousand people we would land a man on the moon before the decade was out. The rocket didn’t exist. No one could say with certainty a human body would survive the journey. He said it anyway. And we accomplished it. We have reached that kind of moment once more, and this time the destination beyond the moon already has our footprints on it. Mars sits two hundred forty million miles away. Our machines have already crawled its surface, read its soil, and confirmed that water once moved across that terrain in rivers wide enough to see from space. What remains is the act of going, and the courage to go as people who understand they are not just traveling to a place but starting a civilization.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ That is the weight this generation carries. The people who first set boots into the soil of Mars will decide what humanity brings with it. Not just the tools and the science, but the values, the hard-won understanding of what breaks a society and what holds one together across centuries. We know what foundational mistakes cost. Every civilization that ever crossed into the unknown left marks that outlasted the people who made them. That knowledge is something no prior generation of explorers carried when they left the shore. We have it. We have the hardware. What we need now is the will to match what we have already built, and the wisdom to send people to Mars carrying more than the means to survive. The moon was once the ceiling. It became the floor. Mars is waiting. And so are we.

My sons, watching Artemis II launch from their front yard in Orlando.