Returning to the Moon (Sans White Males)

 

Did you know that NASA has a program called Artemis, the goal of which is to return astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2026?  I’m guessing most people are unaware of that.  These days, most people are far more concerned with mundane realities such as finding a way to pay for skyrocketing food and rent, the costs of which are going to the moon.  They are also worried about the upcoming election, the candidates and opposite visions of which seem to emanate from two totally different universes.

There simply is no national enthusiasm for going to the moon like there was in the 1960s.  Part of it is because we’ve “been there and done that,” so it won’t be the same historic accomplishment for mankind.  Another part is there’s no more Cold War, which was a huge motivating factor in the ‘60s.  And as already alluded to, another reason is the distracting political polarization of the country.  We can’t agree on anything, not even on what a woman is.  Why would a country like that need to go to the moon?  It’s almost like a vanity project for astronauts and scientists as they pretend Western civilization isn’t falling apart in front of our eyes.

And then there’s the fact that we’re the brokest, most in-debt nation in the history of the world, around $35 trillion as of this writing — and going up fast.

So we’re going back to the moon?  Who cares?  Our country is being ripped apart at the seams on every level and nothing could be more irrelevant than Artemis right now.

I take no pleasure in saying this because I should personally be more excited about the Artemis mission.  In 1957, my family moved to Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral, where my father got a job working in the space program.  We were there for most of the “wild and wooly days” of the Mercury Project, including John Glenn’s orbital flight in ‘62. Later, my dad worked at North American Aviation where the Apollo 11 space capsule was designed and built, and which then carried the first astronauts to land on the moon.

So I have a personal connection, a lifelong fascination with, and enthusiasm for, the American space program.  And for the last 52 years, I’ve been sorely disappointed that no one has gone beyond Earth’s orbit.  I would ordinarily be excited about Artemis, and yet I’m not.  Why?  Because, along with the reasons already mentioned above, as with virtually everything else in contemporary woke America, leftism and cultural Marxism has ruined everything under the sun — including a trip to the moon.

From the NASA website:

“With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars. . . .  NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon . . .”

And there it is!  They’re going to take the divisive scourge of identity politics and put it on the moon, and then later they’ll take it to Mars as well to make Mars Marxist, culturally speaking, that is.  No thanks.

Four people will be headed for the moon, but only two of the four will actually set foot on the moon while the other two remain in lunar orbit.  And according to NASA’s declaration of diversity quoted above, it looks like those two absolutely, positively have to be a woman and a person of color, no matter what.  So, it will be a DEI space voyage with what amounts to affirmative action astronauts — and this is what we’ve waited over fifty years for.

Check out NASA’s DEI page for yourself.  It’s a big, long, virtue-signaling statement of boilerplate diversity-speak, common to all contemporary organizations.  But unlike most organizations, NASA is one that will send human beings into the most dangerous and unforgiving environment there is: space.  One mistake, one miscalculation, and it will kill you dead in a nanosecond.  Therefore, when determining who is going to set foot on the moon, why would someone’s identity have anything to do with the selection process?

The answer is that NASA, along with most other organizations in America, has been captured by cultural Marxism, the overriding characteristic of which is being anti-white male.  Of course, here’s how they euphemistically couch it:

“Our broad view of diversity and inclusion embraces the commonalities that connect organizations and individuals, as well as the unique differences in culture, history, traits, skills, capabilities, and thinking that are vital for our mission success [emphasis mine].”

Tell me NASA, if diversity is so almighty vital to mission success, then how on Earth did that not-very-diverse organization at the time manage to put two men, both white, on the moon in 1969 after starting from scratch a mere ten years or so earlier?  How?  How?  How?

You’d like to think that an organization that is filled with brilliant scientists and engineers would be immune to this kind of stupidity.  But no. The next people to step onto the moon absolutely, positively, no matter what, have to be something other than white males.  Just like Biden’s vice president absolutely, positively, no matter what, had to be a woman of color.  And now, that woman of color, who turned out to be a complete nitwit, may soon be disastrously running the country.

By the way, just to be clear about something . . .  There’s nothing wrong with putting a woman and/or a person of color on the moon if they happen to be the most qualified.  In that case, great, more power to them!  What’s wrong is when you require it, no matter what, in order to prove you’re not biased and to go along with the current mass delusion that diversity, in and of itself, inherently makes everything better.  Nothing could be more irrational and counter to all historical human achievement.

So, how am I supposed to get excited about Artemis when the people running the program are governed by cultural Marxism rather than cold hard science, rationality and a drive for excellence and achievement?  How did Marxism work out for the Soviet space program?  Yes, they beat us into space initially with the first satellite and the first human, but what about after that?  Did they beat us to the moon?  Did they ever even make it to the moon?  No, they didn’t — and eventually their whole empire collapsed under its own stifling weight.

I recently wrote about Elon Musk and how, even though he has vociferously spoken out against the “woke mind virus,” his own ambition of going to Mars could be sorely hampered by woke employees at his company, SpaceX, who are suing him over sexual harassment and gender discrimination.  I mused that wokeness might very well prevent a Mars mission from ever getting off the ground.

And speaking of gender discrimination, why does NASA have no requirement for rainbow representation on the Artemis mission?  Why isn’t there going to be a gay, nonbinary or trans on this mission?  Aren’t their “unique differences in . . . traits, skills, capabilities, and thinking . . . vital for . . . mission success”?  Don’t we need to plant the first rainbow flag on an extraterrestrial body and thereby queer the moon?  Isn’t the moon literally “somewhere over the rainbow”?

Getting to the moon is a lot easier than getting to Mars, so there’s little doubt it will be done.  But if a key part of Artemis is going to be the senseless and potentially dangerous furtherance of woke, anti-white male identity politics, then my interest in the mission is about the same as it is for the next installment of the diversity training my corporate employer forces me to take.

It’s funny how things change. Once upon a time, one of the prime motivations of our space program was to thwart Soviet Marxism.  Now it’s being used to promote American Marxism.  I can only imagine what might be the first words spoken by the DEI astronauts after stepping onto the surface of the moon . . .

That’s one small step for a non-white man, one giant leap for womynkind!

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  1. Not a Banana Republican Coolidge
    Not a Banana Republican
    @Dbroussa

    On the one hand, the astronaut is, in many ways, the most redundant and useless part of every space mission.  On the other hand, it is the person that we send that makes all the difference.  Sure, we have seen fantastic pictures from Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, but they won’t be the same until someone goes there and sees them with their naked eye.

    Does it matter whether the astronaut is male or female?  Not really.  Does it matter if they are White, Black, Brown, or any other assorted color?  Not really. I remember when the Columbia broke up on re-entry and I was looking at the crew that was lost that day.  One person was Kalpana Chawla who was born in India in 1962.  She would get a BEng degree in India and move to the US in 1982 at the age of 20 where she would earn two Masters degrees and then a PhD before then becoming an astronaut. The list of people who become astronauts is impressive, and none of them lack talent and ability. I suppose it is possible that we will see a degradation in the quality, and perhaps we have seen that, but all of them are immensely qualified as near as I can tell.  

    Should they choose to send someone like Kalpana on an Artemis mission then we will be well represented.  When they start treating the qualifications lightly then we should worry.  

    • #1
  2. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    Is NASA going to enforce stereotypes and identity erasure by using cis hetero gyno-Americans?

    Will they plant a rainbow flag on the moon?

    Boring white spacesuits or something FABULOUS instead?

     

     

    • #2
  3. Drew didn't ban himself Member
    Drew didn't ban himself
    @OldDanRhody

    Are you trying to start a riot?
    Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!

    • #3
  4. JoelB Member
    JoelB
    @JoelB

    Memories of WWII kept the adults (mostly) in charge for about 20 years.

    • #4
  5. Eb Snider Member
    Eb Snider
    @EbSnider

    Hasn’t NASA successfully stranded a woman and person of color in space already with the missteps of Boeing?  I have my doubts that this mission will be completed in 2026; delays probable. I do agree that the focus is off. By distracting from the primary focus I think it increases the likelihood for mistakes. Injecting left wing politics into everything is like a contamination in your food. Everything tastes off and its hard to chew and swallow. It also diminishes the dignity of any high caliber woman or “colored person” who mans the mission.

    The 2014 documentary film “Last Man on the Moon” was bitter sweet. I found it to be a powerful film that followed Gene Cernan, who as the title indicates was the last man to walk on the moon. You hear people today talk about “the moon landing” as if it only occurred once. There were 6 successful missions as I recall. Apparently there were additional moon landings planned, but NASA pulled the plug on the program in the tumult of the 70s. Cernan definitely comes across as a charismatic man of his time. Toward the end there’s a touching moment when Cernan is touring a dead NASA facility. The shuttle program ended around 2011 which ended America’s independent space travel capacity. The old Cernan gets choked up because it’s as if everything he was a part of died. Discontinued. There was no proud space tradition ongoing. No place to walk into to tell the next generation “how we did it back then”. Cernan is no longer around to have an opinion on Artemis.

    Maybe with SpaceX there will be a rejuvenation of a focus on Space exploration excellence.  However, with the near monopoly leftist thinking has on campus it’s difficult to think there’s enough qualified, mission focused people to recruit. 

     

     

    • #5
  6. Eb Snider Member
    Eb Snider
    @EbSnider

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    Is NASA going to enforce stereotypes and identity erasure by using cis hetero gyno-Americans?

    Will they plant a rainbow flag on the moon?

    Boring white spacesuits or something FABULOUS instead?

     

     

    I wouldn’t rule out pride progress space suits. It just has to be updated for the most recent iteration. 

    • #6
  7. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Good, informative article. 

    You did well in delaying the use of the term “Marxism” to the end of the 6th paragraph, or my eyes might have glazed over and caused me to skip it, just as the use of the terms “diversity,”  “inclusion,” and “colonialism” by the left cause me to look for the exits, quick, before my eyes glaze over.   

    • #7
  8. Nathanael Ferguson Contributor
    Nathanael Ferguson
    @NathanaelFerguson

    There simply is no national enthusiasm for going to the moon like there was in the 1960s.  Part of it is because we’ve “been there and done that,” so it won’t be the same historic accomplishment for mankind.  Another part is there’s no more Cold War, which was a huge motivating factor in the ‘60s.

    I think one major reason nobody pays attention to this stuff is because we absolutely don’t believe NASA can do it. They certainly can’t do it on whatever schedule they’ve announced. NASA can’t independently put people in space and they’re going to put people on the moon in two-ish years? Ridiculous! It seems more likely that Elon Musk will land people on Mars before NASA will land people on the moon. Musk gets results while NASA gets loads of taxpayer dollars only to go way over budget and kick the can down the road. If kicking cans down the road was a professional sport, NASA would be the world champ!

    • #8
  9. Al French Moderator
    Al French
    @AlFrench

    Greg Strange: NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon

    Let’s send Kamala Harris – right now.

    • #9
  10. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Greg Strange: Why isn’t there going to be a gay, nonbinary or trans on this mission? 

    I’ll bet you there will be.  Probably plant the Queer Banner on the surface.

    • #10
  11. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Eb Snider (View Comment):
    Apparently there were additional moon landings planned, but NASA pulled the plug on the program in the tumult of the 70s

    There were 2 more man rated Saturn 5 launch vehicles that were paid for by the US taxpayers. They turned them into static displays, one at Cape Canaveral, one in Houston.

    • #11
  12. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    Kozak (View Comment):

    Eb Snider (View Comment):
    Apparently there were additional moon landings planned, but NASA pulled the plug on the program in the tumult of the 70s

    There were 2 more man rated Saturn 5 launch vehicles that were paid for by the US taxpayers. They turned them into static displays, one at Cape Canaveral, one in Houston.

    We also have a static display in the White House.

    • #12
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