Off into space!
Awesome – that’s the only word for the launch of Artemis 2 earlier this week. It was just awesome.
Linda and I watched the live feed from NASA starting about an hour before launch. From a camera mounted inside the Whtie Room, we saw technicians close the capsule door, disconnect two hoses and cover the opening, then get away as the crane that contained the room moved aside.
About a half hour later, after many reports of systems being “Go,” the rockets were fired – the massive liquid fuel rockets that could be shut down in an emergency and the two solid fuel rockets that once ignited would stop burning only when they were totally spent. Awesome, scary; hard to believe the complex technology that harnessed such raw and primitive power.
One image especially sticks with me. A camera inside the capsule showed the head of mission specialist Christina Koch as the crew waited for launch, strapped down in such close quarters that she had barely enough room to turn her head.
Godspeed, astronauts!
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A story so sad I can hardly tell it: Barrett Breznik of Kearney, Missouri, was born with Down Syndrome. He had surgery for a heart condition, then developed cirrhosis of the liver but was removed from the liver transplant list after doctors determined that multiple infections meant that he would not survive the surgery. He was only seven months old when he died.
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Robert Mueller was a decorated Marine veteran and former director of the FBI who served under four presidents. He was classy, intelligent, brave and honest. His recent death was celebrated by the current occupant of the White House, demonstrating an attitude so degraded you wonder how both could be of the same species.
I write this on Good Friday, when we mark Jesus’ death for all. So the one who suffers by comparison with almost every other human being also is one for whom Christ died. That makes him very valuable. Alas, all he seems to value glitters with insignificance, and with every action he takes he tries to drag us all down with him.
