For those of you based in the UK who are early risers (ugh), I should be on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in about half an hour to talk about this 😬👇
Yes, you try explaining the changes to the Artemis lunar landing timeline, & also all the things that *weren’t* said during yesterday’s NASA presser, in just five minutes.
I’ve spent all night thinking about it & am none the clearer 😱
#Space #SpaceExploration #SpaceFlight #BBCRadio4 #BBCTodayProgramme #Artemis
Update: pushed back half an hour to 08:50 GMT / 09:50 CET.
Which, given the endlessly delayed Artemis programme under discussion, seems perfectly appropriate.
@stairjoke Yes, I got dropped.
And yes, the Tangerine Tyrant being bluffed into a totally unwinnable war by someone else aiming to ever being put in jail is a fair reason to focus on the real world ahead of the fantasy one on the Moon.
We're in such a massive mess ...
@markmccaughrean it feels overwhelming right now. Just as it did when Putin started the war in Ukraine, and when Israel responded with war to the Hamas terrorist attacks.
We need to remember that everything will end eventually, including wars and the reign of Trump. Sounds bleak, but in this context, I think, it can give us hope.
@stairjoke I agree in some ways, but there’s another issue underneath that isn’t going to go away & that’s climate change.
Its slow but inexorable erosion of the stability underpinning our complex civilisation is going to provoke constant crisis & war, as populations try to move, as agriculture fails, as opportunist narcissists grab their ugly moment in the limelight.
And this in a world armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
@markmccaughrean true.
Reading “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization”, a book by Roy Scranton has drastically changed how I look at the climate crisis. It’s not going to go away, and we’re not going to stop being stupid about it, as a species. Once I accepted that almost everything about it is out of my control, I could start focussing on the things I can have an impact on.
@stairjoke That’s a wise, if darkly defeatist perspective.
I mean, I don’t disagree with it, but a large part of me wants to scream at the world & say “we can stop this; we can fix this” … but better people than me have been trying to send this message for decades & our collective response has been woeful.
I’ll look up the book though – I definitely need to be walked through how to embrace the inevitable. I can accept it for myself, but for my children & their children … ?
Mark McCaughrean
Wenzel Massag