Watching the crew of Artemis II circle the dark side of the moon this week — traveling farther into space than any humans in history — made me feel like I was back in Mrs. Palmer’s fourth grade class at Longview Elementary in Phoenix.
That’s quite a trick, considering it has been 58 years since I sat in that class. The memories from those days remain vivid in my mind, even if they are in black and white.
That was all the TV that was wheeled into our classroom could show us. It was December 1968. Color TV was a luxury beyond the school district’s budget. But Mrs. Palmer and other teachers at the school felt the mission of Apollo 8 — which, like Artemis II, also orbited the moon but didn’t land — was more important for us than any math, science or reading lesson we might otherwise have received.
Indeed, I can’t remember anything from our lessons in those subjects that week, but I will never forget what I felt watching those images from space.
I see myself!
It’s time a new generation has that experience.
Back then, our class was awed into silence as the astronauts turned their cameras toward the windows and showed the Earth floating through space. We were mesmerized and unusually silent until one of my friends pointed at the image of Earth and said, “Hey, look! I see myself!”
We laughed. The timing was perfect for fourth grade humor. And yet, the joke carried more truth than we were capable of understanding.
Writing for The New York Times this week, Katrina Miller reflected on the new images of Earth as Artemis II began its trek across the dark side of the moon.
“There it was: the swirly blue crescent of our planet, with all of humanity — every single one of us, you, me, everyone we know — in tow. It dipped ever lower on the horizon of a lifeless, pockmarked moon, a poignant farewell to the members of the crew as they plunged into silence.”
More than that, however, the images, both in 1968 and in 2026, give us perspectives of ourselves we may not have considered.
Those two years have a lot in common. The late ‘60s were filled with worry and tumult. Young people marched against a war and threatened society’s morals, rules and customs. Others braved physical attacks as they marched for basic civil rights. It seemed as if assumptions about everything and everyone were being redefined.
Today, the nation is again involved in a war. Economic uncertainty, rising gas prices and a looming national debt cloud the future, and the nation seems hopelessly divided along political lines.
In short, it’s the perfect time for four heroes to risk their lives in a record-setting manned flight again.
Some people question the value of manned space travel when robots could make ideal substitutes. But I doubt robots on Apollo 8 would have set my imagination soaring. Artemis II, like Apollo 8, reminds us of the things humans can do right if they set their minds to them.
We can go to the moon and back. Surely, we can fix our other problems, too.
What will we discover?
Meanwhile, no one knows what sort of unexpected things we will find along the way.
When the Soviets launched sputnik, the first orbiting satellite, on Oct. 4, 1957, news reports in the United States were stunningly myopic. Military experts were quoted saying the spaceship meant little because “satellites would have no practicable military application in the foreseeable future.”
They had no way of predicting smartphones that could use geopositioning satellites to map a jogging route or to provide drivers with navigation. They couldn’t foresee “memory foam, scratch-resistant lenses, CAT scanners, LEDs, ear thermometers, and the portable computer,” among other things listed as benefits from the space program on a Jet Propulsion Laboratory website.
Whenever NASA engineers its way out of a problem, it seems as if new products are born, making life on Earth a little easier.
And every time astronauts accomplish something new, young people begin dreaming about achievements far beyond the world around them.
Like me, they may never grow up to be astronauts. But the thrill of endless possibilities will stay with them for decades.
That thrill has now skipped too many generations. Artemis II could bring it back. It’s about time.