NASA: It’s a wonderful fake world
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Today is supposed to be the launch day of NASA’s first rocket to the moon in 50 years. It’s called Artemis, and it won’t contain any astronauts, nor will it actually land on the moon—those feats were no problem 50 years ago, but are way too complicated for modern-day rocket scientists.
Guess who’s signed on to help Artemis in its next mission, an unmanned flight that will attempt to land? SpaceX, of course—the “you know it’s real because it looks so fake” company. It’s a truly exciting public-private partnership inspired by Hollywood.
One thing NASA has advanced in tremendously since the old moon landings is computer-generated imagery (CGI). Watch the top left of the screen in the 6-minute video about Artemis above, to see the source of the clips—the “NASA ANIMATION” videos are fantastic. If they were a bit more refined, would you know they were CGI?
The old lost technology
In 1969, we didn’t have cell phones, personal computers or the Internet; most households only had 1 or 2 small black-and-white TVs, and the only way to see a movie was in a theater.
But we did have some pretty miraculous things back then, technology-wise—like golf games on the moon, and telephone calls to space. To this day, Nixon’s historic phone call to the moon from the White House in 1969 holds the record for the longest long-distance call ever made.
Technology is fickle, and has a grudge against NASA
While a technological revolution swept over the world in the last half-century, somehow it entirely missed NASA.
In fact, not only did NASA not advance in space flight beyond low-earth orbit, it actually regressed. According to NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who appears at 5:40 in the video below, NASA “destroyed” the technology to get to the moon, and hasn’t been able to get it back again.
The strange thing is, no one really noticed or cared. Year after year, we have continued to give NASA billions, even though it still has not found the technology to get to the moon that it somehow lost so many decades ago. Why do we continue to fund NASA in the face of such apparent monumental uselessness and incompetence? Maybe because it’s not NASA’s fault—technology sometimes has a mind of its own, and maybe NASA is just a victim of technology’s fickle nature. Maybe.
Artemis for social justice!
Incredibly, even though this Artemis flight is unmanned and won’t land on the moon, it is “opening the door for the first woman, and the first person of color, to set foot on the moon,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, at about minute 2:00 in the video about Artemis above. It’s just one of the many reasons why the $93 billion Artemis price tag is worth it. What better way to help women and people of color than building a giant space rocket for a single test flight?
Apparently, those 3 white guys who went to the moon in 1969 only opened the door for other white guys. Or, maybe it was some design flaw in the doors of the Apollo spacecraft—I’m not sure. NASA probably isn’t sure either, since it destroyed that technology.
Final thoughts
I don’t know if NASA intends to send a real rocket to the moon this time—but you can be certain that everyone in major media, mainstream or alternative, will either assume or pretend it’s real, just like they pretended Elon Musk’s roadster in space was real, and just like they pretend every other news story that slimes its way onto their news feed is real.
The silence about fakery is a serious problem, since a lot of news stories are not real. Pandemics are faked. Shootings are faked. Deaths are faked. Elections are faked. Roadsters in space are faked. Capitol Building invasions are faked. Wars are faked. Trials are faked. Whether or not the event was real is the first question that should always be asked, but never is.
We can cross our fingers that NASA is doing something real this time. It’s just an unmanned rocket that doesn’t even need to land, after all—surely NASA can manage that without deception. Or not.