Artemis II is unlikely to be the cultural touchstone Apollo 8 was, and that's OK - Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/artemis-ii-is-unlikely-to-be-the-cultural-touchstone-apollo-8-was-and-thats-ok/?comments-page=5

Artemis II is unlikely to be the cultural touchstone Apollo 8 was, and that's OK

NASA has struggled to deal with the widespread sentiment that NASA has “been there, done that."

Ars Technica

Hmm...

- There's no monoculture like in the late 1960s, as the article notes. As I said before, the publicity for Artemis II feels less than it should be.
- Yes, current events definitely have distracted from this.
- Yes, we've already been to the Moon, so there's that re: attention levels.

- The Cold War was a big motivating factor in the 60s for everything. The USSR was seen as basically evil incarnate, to be beaten at *any* cost. This even filtered into pop culture: the spy genre; parodies like "Bullwinkle"; and comics (the Fantastic Four's origin flight was to "beat the Russians").
China in contrast doesn't have that same level of antipathy, even if their government isn't seen by anyone as anything but authoritarian. A whole generation's grown up since the Cold War ended, so yelling "commie" doesn't get the same affect from Gen Z/Millennials as from Boomers.
Also, unlike Russia, China makes a lot of popular stuff: electronics, TikTok, etc. Finally, some of the "beat China" sentiment's probably driven by racism (given the people currently in charge).
@dtgeek plus "going to the moon" and "flyover 5000 km from the moon" are *very* different things, and only the later is really bring going to bring attention