The Artemis II around-the-moon shot has evoked nostalgic moments for me. In 1972, the last time anyone, man or woman, went to the moon, I was a teenager. Since my father had worked on all the moon shots, they loomed large in our lives.

But the whole world watched the original moon landing in 1969. We all thrilled to the fuzzy black-and-white image of Neil Armstong setting foot on our nearest neighbor, in the dark and dust, as he proclaimed the step was meant for all mankind. I have compared notes with a Russian friend who’s my age, and we both remember it as a highlight and both still treasure the moon landing keepsakes we collected. (The difference was that I could watch it take off from my front yard in Florida.) The mission grew out of a race between warring nations, but once we got there, we realized the achievement was bigger than the conflict between our two countries.

But just as importantly, the NASA Apollo missions gave us a living color photo of our planet from space – the “blue marble” hanging in a vast black void. It sparked new movements and new comprehension that we all share this little planet; our only planet.

Back then, the US was at war, the protests were mounting and by 1972, Nixon was starting to understand he was in a battle that could not be won, in which American soldiers were dying in a far-off country for objectives that were increasingly outdated and unsustainable. It would be another two years before he withdrew troops from Vietnam.

That is to say, the moon landings were not just a publicity stunt that drew our attention away from the war. They changed the way we think about ourselves, our place in the world, about the Earth as a living system and our responsibility toward a planet that, in the general scale of things, is a tiny atom on a speck of dust. We saw not just an adventure, but a means of looking down on ourselves and taking in the entire world at a glance. In some ways, one could say it contributed to the end of the Vietnam war, as the far-away county scrunched up practically next door to us upon the thin sheath of our shrunk-up sphere.

Some 54 years later, as the US is once again involved in a war in which it cannot achieve its goals, only progress according to schedule and adapt its aims to fit, I ask myself: What has changed? Are we trapped in some kind of Groundhog Day scenario, forced to relive events until we get them right? Have we completely forgot the lessons of the 1970s?

Several hints that things are a bit different these days – and not just because we now fight with AI and drones – came from the New York Times. For one thing, the trip to the moon did make the front page, but appeared way down below the Iran war and air crew rescue, “My husband can’t get a job. Should I divorce him?”, the benefits of hormones, etc. And when I got to a piece on the moon, it was about the potential resources that we might find over on the dark side.

That is, “a giant step for mankind” has turned into an engineering issue of how to mine the minerals locked up in moon rocks. Are we too busy fighting one another to be reminded of the thrill of seeing the Earth from above, to hear an astronaut describe the mind-blowing experience of passing out of the planet’s atmosphere into the black of space? The answer is, apparently, yes; the mission seemingly mostly appeals to astronomy geeks and young kids who still can dream.

“a giant step for mankind” has turned into an engineering issue of how to mine the minerals locked up in moon rocks

“a giant step for mankind” has turned into an engineering issue of how to mine the minerals locked up in moon rocks

Our blue planet is littered with missile casings while extreme weather, fires and sandstorms rake the surface. Do we care, or is reopening the shipping lane for cheap fossil fuels that will further pollute our planet our main focus?

I follow the moonshot news, not just because of that nostalgia, but because I hope we can get back to the days when, despite the hot and cold wars, an astronaut could declare in words that would reverberate around the world that he had taken “one giant step for mankind.” The moon missions let us dream of a more peaceful future, in which the moon, like Antarctica, would belong to no nation. In which nations might work together to explore and map our Solar System, in which we might learn about ourselves by looking at photos taken from so far up, the Earth devolves into storm systems, oceans and continents. In which we and our wars and battles are insignificant blots, at best.

Alas, I have, as usual, a shred of hope, but little optimism. I don’t really believe that this time around, the moon mission, while adding to our knowledge of the moon and even the possibility of setting up shop there among the black dust, will inspire a generation to work for the environment or world peace. I fear the words of the astronauts will not be “for mankind,” but more along the lines of “We’ve identified water, now we can think about another small step in extracting resources.”

Still, I encourage you to find a moment to go out of your bomb shelter, look up at the night sky and think about those astronauts on their way out of the Earth’s troubles, past its upper limit and around the dark side of the moon. If you think about it, it’s not all dark. When the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the dark side is in full sunlight. (So there, Pink Floyd). Maybe we can get to another epiphany, another chance to remind ourselves that we, the Lebanese, Iranians, the Houthis and Saudis all share the same tiny blue marble, hanging in space, with no other planet to call home.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)