The Next Giant Leap

“Artemis”: Greek goddess of the Moon; protector of young women; twin sister of Apollo.

Ray Bradbury called it “The Loneliness.” The way everything shrinks down when you leave the Earth, yourself most of all, body and soul. Watching the planet dwindle, that impossible oasis of light in a vast universe of darkness. The surrounding dark matter like so much invisible pack ice. The globe contracting if not to a point then to something little larger than a small coin, easily obscured by a thumb held out at arm’s length.

The crew of Artemis II may experience something similar when they leave orbit and head towards the Moon; or maybe they’ll just be too busy to notice. Somehow I think not, despite all the checklists and the media scrutiny and the comms traffic with Mission Control. They’ll float to the small glass windows and watch as their home world recedes. It must take guts to do that. To let go of the tether and float away into the void, like a trapeze artist stepping off the rigging for the first time. To tumble through the air without a net. Guts and a fierce resolve to make it back. What could be worth the gamble, the nerve to go for that triple mid-air somersault, except a chance to glimpse another world up close? Something so few human beings have ever done.

Bradbury’s space voyagers, the occupants of his famous “silver locusts,” were headed to Mars; the crew of Artemis II are headed for the Moon. Theirs will be the first human eyes to see that cratered globe up close since the crew of Apollo 17 back in 1972.  But like the fictional world Bradbury imagined, the Moon is haunted terrain because down there, living the immortal lives which only a fictional construct can confer, are others who reached that world long before the Apollo astronauts did. Explorers like Bedford and Cavor, the heroes of H.G. Wells The First Men In the Moon, and the engineers and sappers who uncovered the Monolith on the Moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

But where, it has to be said, are the much needed female role models, intrepid leaders and pioneers whose exploits on the surface of the Moon we can share and celebrate? The female Moon pilots and space commanders. They, one suspects, are on the way, and none too soon. Such as Christina Koch, the lone female crew member in the Artemis expedition. So that one day we might hear a familiar if slightly altered message being radioed back from one of those dusty craters: “That’s one small step for a woman; one giant leap for humankind.” It’s a message I, for one, can’t wait to hear.