The look at the dark side of the moon from Artemis II will not briefly unite human­i­ty the way “one small step for a man” did. But it will offer a mea­sure of the forces that have riv­en us from that brief aware­ness of what humans can accomplish.

Set­backs and prob­lems large and nig­gly test­ed the patience of Artemis’ sup­port­ers and the resolve of its many engineers.
In his speech to the nation (and by virtue of his posi­tion in the world), Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump spent 35 sec­onds talk­ing about Artemis.
Then he urged Amer­i­cans to see the Iran war as an “invest­ment” in their future.
It’s dif­fi­cult to see how, com­pared to Artemis, that is in any way,  “bang-for-buck”.
Accord­ing to the Iran War Cost Track­er, a few min­utes before this blog was post­ed, the price tag was just on $40-bil­lion and click­ing up faster than a petrol (or gas) pump fill­ing an SUV.
Click here to watch, and be appalled.
 An esti­mate by NASA’s Inspec­tor Gen­er­al puts the cost of Artemis at around 93-bil­lion so far.  And that’s over sev­er­al years, as opposed to just over a month for the Iran spec­tac­u­lar.Accord­ing to Trump  “In these past four weeks, our armed forces have deliv­ered swift, deci­sive, over­whelm­ing vic­to­ries on the bat­tle­field. Vic­to­ries like few peo­ple have ever seen before”.
And just in case the Ira­ni­ans or any­one else thought that added up to vic­to­ry: “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.”
On  more ratio­nal and use­ful lev­el, Artemis is con­duct­ing exper­i­ments with some­thing called “organ-on-a-chip tech­nol­o­gy”. Rough­ly the size of a USB thumb dri­ve, it  mim­ics human tis­sue func­tion on a micro scale. Among its poten­tial ben­e­fits are advance­ments in indi­vid­u­al­ized treat­ments for dis­eases such as cancer.
Artemis is crewed by three Amer­i­cans and a Cana­di­an. Among their tasks is launch­ing “Cube­Sats”, mini satel­lites pro­vid­ed by Ger­many, South Korea, Sau­di Ara­bia and Argenti­na to con­duct research on radi­a­tion, space weath­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion systems.
That’s coop­er­a­tion among nations seek­ing knowl­edge for the good of us all, even though back on Earth they have to deal with Trump’s predilec­tion for hurl­ing insults and threats at any­one who does not gen­u­flect before his whims.                   

                            LESSONS UNLEARNED

Lis­ten­ing to exchanges between the crew of Artemis and the techs at Mis­sion Con­trol is an object les­son in how well even the most com­plex issues can be dealt with and resolved when peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly and succinctly.
U.S. Defence Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth insist­ed Tues­day that Trump has “inter­nal­ized” lessons from pre­vi­ous, drawn-out U.S. conflicts
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is “not going to repeat those lessons.”
He also called his boss “unpre­dictable”, which  is sup­pos­ed­ly an asset.
Unpre­dictable is defined as, among oth­er things: “ not able to be known or declared in advance.”
Inco­her­ent, a relat­ed word, means “ lack­ing order­ly con­ti­nu­ity, arrange­ment, or relevance.”
Both seem to fit Trump in equal mea­sure, which does not add up to any­thing resem­bling use­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion, let alone a strat­e­gy to bring peace and pros­per­i­ty to anyone.
Describ­ing the war as “an excur­sion” and “a lit­tle jour­ney” and then avow­ing that you are “unstop­pable as a mil­i­tary force” hard­ly ranks as PR genius either.
Based on their espi­onage record and self-image, Israel ought to have a much clear­er idea of where the war is going. But their pub­lic utter­ances belie that.
Senior Israeli offi­cials described the Iran­ian regime as bat­tered but resilient, sta­ble and feel­ing triumphant.
That doesn’t sound much as though aya­tol­lahs hink they’re los­ing to two of the world’s most pow­er­ful militaries.
But appar­ent­ly the Amer­i­cans and Israelis think more than a thou­sand civil­ians deaths, wide­spread destruc­tion of civil­ian infra­struc­ture at the cost of hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of weapon­ry. is a bet­ter idea than look­ing for  a cease­fire at least.
Being in the Israeli orbit is putting the U.S. on a tra­jec­to­ry to com­mit­ting war crimes.
Trump threat­ened to expand the war by tar­get­ing ener­gy and civil­ian infra­struc­ture, and said that if a deal was not reached short­ly, and the Strait of Hor­muz remained closed, he would attack Iran’s elec­tri­cal gen­er­a­tion plants, oil wells and desali­na­tion plants.
In space, allies and friends take cal­cu­lat­ed risks in the com­mon cause of dis­cov­ery and progress.
War­mon­gers and crim­i­nals, on the oth­er hand, risk their nation’s souls  and the future their chil­dren must sure­ly dream of as they watch Artemis.
The space­craft that real­ly will, in the immor­tal Star Trek catch­phrase, “Bold­ly go where no human has gone before”, is named Integri­ty, an attribute increas­ing­ly con­spic­u­ous by its absence back here on Earth.

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c.