With 1 Simple Word, the Artemis II Astronauts Just Taught a Brilliant Lesson in Leadership |
With 1 Simple Word, the Artemis II Astronauts Just Taught a Brilliant Lesson in Leadership
‘I’ll be honest with you, the main word, because superlatives just don’t do it justice, is humility.’
EXPERT OPINION BY BILL MURPHY JR., FOUNDER OF UNDERSTANDABLY AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, INC. @BILLMURPHYJR
(L-R) Canadian Space Agency astronaut, NASA Artemis II Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronaut and Artemis II Mission Specialist Christina Koch, NASA astronaut and Artemis II pilot Victor Gloverand and NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman look on during the rollout of NASA’s next-generation moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion crew capsule, to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, in January 17, 2026. Photo: Getty Images
Thing to know about me: I sometimes have a hard time taking a compliment.
I get all tongue-tied, on the one hand, trying to be grateful and gracious to the person who offered it, but on the other hand trying to ensure that the real credit goes to my team.
So I imagine how lost in space I might have been if I’d been in the space shoes of mission specialist Christina Koch, when it fell to her to answer a very specific question from Merriam-Webster, of all sources, during a live Q&A last night.
Here’s the question, which was apparently prompted by the folks at Merriam-Webster, and channeled through NASA:
How Anthropic's Claude AI Became a Co-Founder
“You’ve already surpassed more than 250,000 miles from Earth — farther than any human has gone before. So what are some words that come to mind when you try to wrap your mind around this very unique experience?”
The astronauts passed the microphone around a bit before Koch took charge. Here’s what she had to say:
I’ll be honest with you, the main word, because superlatives just don’t do it justice, is humility. We would never be here if it weren’t for so many people that came before us, starting with Neil Armstrong, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, civil rights movement leaders. Everyone who worked on this spacecraft before we got here in our three years of training. We went all over the country and to European and Canadian partners to see the people who have put their hands on this hardware — the millions of parts from every valve to this entire thing, the people that put on harnesses every day to rig it up in the VAB … They all passed the record. We definitely didn’t pass the record up here alone.
I’ll be honest with you, the main word, because superlatives just don’t do it justice, is humility.
We would never be here if it weren’t for so many people that came before us, starting with Neil Armstrong, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, civil rights movement leaders.
Everyone who worked on this spacecraft before we got here in our three years of training.
We went all over the country and to European and Canadian partners to see the people who have put their hands on this hardware — the millions of parts from every valve to this entire thing, the people that put on harnesses every day to rig it up in the VAB …
They all passed the record. We definitely didn’t pass the record up here alone.
I’m impressed — and not just because she had the foresight to say “humility” was the word that came to mind (it’s the right one), or even to have had the presence of mind to run down this list of other people to thank.