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Fly Me to the Moon Sky Candy

Charlie Martin | 6:17 PM on April 04, 2026
NASA, Public domain

Yeah, I'm late. Yesterday sucked. But here's some good stuff.

Today, we're going to focus on the Moon and the Artemis II mission, along with some history and some projections. And some normal sky candy just as seasoning.

Also, it's PJ Media policy to make fun of the New York Times whenever possible, so we'll start with some history.

“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

That's from a New York Times editorial from Jan. 13, 1920. To be fair, on July 17, 1969, the Times printed the following correction:

On Jan. 13, 1920, “Topics of the Times,” an editorial-page feature of The New York Times, dismissed the notion that a rocket could function in a vacuum and commented on the ideas of Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, as follows:

“That Professor Goddard, with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react — to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”

Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.

So at least that's settled. We saw a new demonstration this week.

The Artemis program has many many problems, which the wonders of government contracting and the desire to have every NASA program have subcontracts in every state and, ideally, in every congressional district have largely driven. We've written about these elsewhere, for example in Rick Moran's Artemis II and the 'Waste of Space', and Stephen Green's We Need to Talk About Artemis. (Steve includes a notion I like — a $1 billion prize for the first private moon habitation. Write your congressbeasts.)

But for now, we have an actual moon mission in progress, and I propose to enjoy it.

We've learned a lot about the Japanese attitude toward the US in the last few weeks.

Space is big. Really big.

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Views of the "big blue marble" have been in our minds since Apollo 8. Here's a comparison:

Some people have been asking why the Artemis picture is so much dimmer, and inferring NASA went cheap on the cameras. The truth is, that's a picture of the Earth from the dark side, by moonlight. Film cameras couldn't have taken that picture at all. If you look carefully, there are aurora at both poles. For all the aurora pictures I've run in Sky Candy, I've never gotten both poles at once before.

There are actually five crew members on Artemis II. Or else four and a stowaway.

There's more to come. You can follow here:

And now a bit farther out.

Lots to see on the trip.

Got to have at least one nebula.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

— Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Back next week, on Friday this time, with more Sky Candy.

Charlie Martin

Charlie Martin writes on science, health, culture, and technology for PJ Media. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

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JAPAN SPACE THE NEW YORK TIMES

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