Watching the Orion spacecraft of the Artemis II moonshot deploy its parachutes and glide down to land in the Pacific Ocean gave me the most wonderful feeling of déjà vu. My next feeling was “It’s about time and what took so long!”

To generations inundated with science fiction movies and TV shows, what just happened may seem mundane. But the Artemis program with its goal of landing on the moon in 2028 and – finally – establishing a moon base is the type of exploration that we should have been doing all along.  What is frustrating is how long it has taken to reinvigorate NASA to do what it was first put together to do.

And we can thank the Trump-Pence Administration for that. For ordering NASA in 2017 to get back into space exploration and stop wasting time on “climate change.” Obama essentially crippled the agency’s space exploration programs. The Dec. 11, 2017, directive included provisions to partner NASA with private corporations – to get the private sector back into the space business with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

I was in elementary school when Neil Armstrong climbed out of the Apollo 11 lander and stepped onto the moon. I remember watching it live on the local television station (there were no cable or satellite channels), like it was yesterday. I bet that was the case for just about everyone else I grew up with. And whenever any of our manned spacecraft were splashing........

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