Despite all the chaos coming out of Washington, D.C. these days, this is a remarkable time to be alive.
Imagine you just woke up from a coma. The last memory you have is from 1981. The Iranian hostages were just being released after 444 days in captivity. You also vaguely remember that NASA was about to launch something called the Space Shuttle. In the first hour, you try to catch up on the news. There’s a lot to take in, but you learn that astronauts have just traveled 252,756 miles to reach the moon for the first time since you were born. The commander of the mission is a widower whose wife recently died after a long battle with cancer. His children encouraged him to go anyway.
They rode on the most powerful rocket ever built by man. And they flew further into space than any human has ever flown. According to the New York Times, if you took 22-inch dachshunds and laid them nose to tail you’d need a very cooperative pack of almost 728 million wiener dogs. As a dachshund owner, I can attest that the barking would be insane. Apparently, we didn’t just go to the moon; we went full Pink Floyd. We went to the dark side of the moon in a manned spacecraft. The Mt. Everest of space travel. No other nation has done this. They’d like to, but they haven’t even mastered how to make crispy bacon. Incredibly, the rocket wasn’t aimed at the moon. It was aimed at where the moon would be in six days. Like quarterback Matthew Stafford throwing a long bomb on a slant route to Devonte Adams, a wide receiver.
The crew went around the backside of the moon and were slingshot back to earth without a hitch. As you sit in awe of the accomplishment, the news anchor mentions that there are only five flags planted on the moon, all are American. You get chills. It strikes you that progress is just a series of small, consistent improvements that compound into something that looks miraculous in hindsight. You wonder how many small, consistent improvements went into this incredible Artemis rocket mission. Apparently, there’s also a billionaire in Texas who has launched around 500 of his own rockets into space. You wonder why anyone would do that.
We are apparently in some kind of skirmish in Iran. You are stunned that after all this time; we’re still dealing with those clowns in Iran. You assume that we are finally confronting the regime that took American citizens hostage back in 1979. While you hate the idea of war, you are impressed with reports of our military’s incredible precision. The war has apparently been on for about a month. During that period, more Americans have been shot in Chicago than in Iran. Meanwhile, it sounds like what’s left of the Iranian regime is hanging on by a fraying thread. Good riddance.
Apparently, an F-15E Strike Eagle jet was shot down over southwestern Iran on Good Friday. An injured Colonel climbed 7,000 feet into the Zagros mountains and hid for 48 hours in a crevice. Using dozens of aircraft, we sent in special operations forces, including SEAL Team 6 and the CIA. It was the most complicated rescue mission in the history of modern warfare. Like something out of a Tom Clancy novel, they pulled him out of Iran on Easter Sunday. How reassuring it must be to the families of those in harm’s way that America leaves no one behind. Ever.
With all this going on, it strikes you that this must be an insane and remarkable time to be alive. In just 15 minutes you’ve seen amazing things that only America could pull off. But you begin to wonder if this kind of stuff happens all the time now. Nobody—including your nurses—seems impressed. How odd. Why isn’t there a ticker tape parade for the astronauts? Why aren’t we celebrating our brave men and women in the military? Why isn’t the F-15E pilot on the news and on Johnny Carson?
You suspect that impossible missions have now become “routinely possible.” That traveling to the dark side of the moon no longer impresses anyone. That “Saving Private Ryan” is now a one-day news story. Maybe that’s the quiet trade we made: once remarkable, twice mundane. When amazing achievements pile up, appreciation atrophies. We apparently built a country where incredible things happen all the time…and then we forgot to stop and appreciate how incredible they really are.
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Special thanks to Erick Erickson for providing inspiration for this column.
