By all rights, this should be something I am deeply passionate about. I’ve been in tech/engineering my entire adult life and was obsessed with NASA as a kid. I even live on the east coast of Florida and can sometimes see the launches/landings over the ocean. But I just… don’t care at all. I’m not suffering from depression or any other malaise, and generally things are fine. But I haven’t clicked on a single link or looked at a single image. I know this has not been the case for many, many people, so I’m wondering what might be different about this launch (or really the whole program in general), and curious if anyone else has found themselves feeling the same.
It’s because it’s not a sexy mission. The astronauts never leave the ship, they’re not landing anywhere, they’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, and the trip is only precursor for the cool stuff that’s yet to come. Nobody remembers the space missions before the first moon landing, and nobody will remember this either.
The explicit goal of this mission is to not just to send people back to the moon, but to actually set up a base there, and that’s exciting stuff. When there is an actual moon base and scientists can travel back and forth from earth to it, the entire world will focus on it because that’s never been done before.