Heck, Apollo 8 did not even have an unmanned dry run of the complete system beyond Earth orbit (mission profiles were switched to stay on the larger timetable).
But yeah, we’ve had too many chances of seeing them mess up in the intervening decades. Confidence has not been fully earned back, in NASA nor in the legacy contractors.
…
That’s too bad because somewhere in this room I feel manifesting out of a fog of memory a 7 year old in whose mind sounds the call-and-response litany of “go” and a voice over a distorted 1MC reciting “ignition sequence start…”
I notice that the commentators are all extremely careful to say “far side” of the moon, so careful that it sounds like they always want to say “dark side”. I would defend the usage of that, because a) it once was accurate, since “dark” in that case meant “hidden” rather than “unlit”, and b) it’s a geographic label, and geographical names can persist even if they are no longer accurate.
But I guess all things considered one should say “far side” since it wouldn’t provoke the people who deliberately misunderstand the phrase.
There’s something special about a manned mission (is there more gender neutral term?) and I do believe these high profile missions are great for inspiring the next generation to get into science and engineering, which has to be one of the key benefits of a space program.
The stream I was watching wasn’t that bad until just a minute ago when it referred unironically to “American exceptionalism”. I thought that this was going to be a fairly neutral broadcast and it seemed like it was - it did mention the first female moon astronaut in a positive manner, unlike the fears that any mention of diversity was verboten. And I almost ironically liked the clip in which American Exceptionalism was dropped, since it nostalgically reminded me of the unswervingly optimistic narrations at theme parks and the like, until it went full jingo.
I’m about 90 miles from the launch site, but the skies here are a bit cloudy. I’ve never been in Florida during a rocket launch before. It should be interesting.
I’ll tell you, though, everyone here is a bit on edge. We just don’t trust this administration not to Eff things up. Our only hope is that the President did not have his fingers in this pie.
Following along with CNN. They’ve had some interesting guests for interviews—past astronauts, Neil De Grasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and others.
I think the final announcement of “go” was fairly emotional but I haven’t heard the launch director speak before so it could just be that she always talks with a little quaver in her voice.
I haven’t been following this closely but for those who are trepidatious, isn’t the launch most likely to be uneventful? And we’ll find out if there’s any issues in 10 days?
My feed suddenly erupted, after at least half an hour, with a lady talking as loudly as she could. So I changed streams and came across this…promo? I muted that after a moment or two.
