Not so long ago, journalist Joel Achenbach asked his daughter what she knew about the Artemis mission, a plan to send U.S. astronauts to the moon.

She thought it was puzzling because we already did that. We went to the moon long before she was born, and she didn't understand why

we would do it again. And I, frankly, had the same reaction. And then, Joel, who spent more

than 30 years at the Washington Post, asked his neighbors. They are plugged in D.C. residents.

Surely they knew what Artemis was, right? Some of my neighbors, including some who were scientists,

thought that Artemis was a Mars plan, you know, send astronauts to Mars,

which is only a little bit true.

The Artemis goal, which Joel wrote about for Slate,

is to put Americans back on the moon before China does it,

and then eventually use the moon mission as a kind of proving ground

to pave the way for missions to Mars.

So the goal with the story that I wrote, in part, was just to say,

hey, this is what's going on.

Well, what is that general cluelessness tell you about the current state of American space travel and how much the public is aware of it?

If you go back to the 1960s, the space program was pretty central in our consciousness. I mean,

they were doing live television broadcasts of rockets being launched with no astronauts aboard,

but we knew that it was important that this version of the Saturn 5 rocket successfully get off the pad.

So Walter Conkite would be on television narrating the launch because it was part of this

race against the Soviet Union to get to the moon first.

All engines are running.

We have liftoff. We have liftoff.

We have liftoff at 7 a.m.

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