We’re going back to moon - Today
Stefanik, Castelli cross paths at Washington County Fair
By Ken Tingley
Over the past year, I’ve become a big fan of the Netflix show “For All Mankind.”
The premise - without spoiling some really cool plot twists in the first few episodes - is that the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union continues well into the 1990s. Moon bases are established and missions to Mars planned because of the Cold War competition.
It is an intriguing idea about where we’d be today if we continued to push the envelope toward other worlds.
It will play out for real over the next five years, beginning with today’s Artemis I mission. Liftoff is scheduled for 8:33 a.m. and six days from now the unmanned capsule Orion will be heading toward the moon where it will orbit for 18 days before returning to Earth.
A second mission in 2024 will carry four astronauts around the moon and back without landing.
Finally in 2025, two astronauts will land the SpaceX Starship rocket near the moon’s South Pole and spend a week exploring before rejoining the orbiting Orion. It would be the first step toward establishing a permanent moon base and a permanent orbiting outpost called “Gateway” above the moon.
For those of us old enough to to remember the excitement of those first Mercury and Gemini launches and then Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, it may all seem a bit redundant.
When I visited Mission Control in Houston last year, we got to see them working on the Orion spacecraft in the vehicle assembly building. Up until then, I didn’t realize the project was going forward.
I suspect most people are not even aware of today’s launch. And for those that are, they may be wondering if it is just a waste of money.
Maybe they need to watch “For All Mankind” to glimpse what might be possible in the coming years.
The moon missions were curtailed in the 1970s for political reasons. The American public had lost interest in the missions and without a competition with the Soviets, it was easy for Congress to cut funding. We’ll never know where we might be today if we had gone forward with more moon explorations.
I’ll be monitoring the moon launch this morning, but sadly I doubt many other people will be.
I’d like to think it is another “small step for mankind,” but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Castelli profiled
Democratic congressional candidate Matt Castelli was profiled by the New York Times last week by Blake Hounshell in his On Politics newsletter.
He interviewed Castelli over beers at the Fenimore Pub, which confused me at first. I thought he might have meant Cooper’s Cave, but then I realized that the pub is the name of the bar at the Queensbury Hotel.
The article is worth a read just to understand Castelli’s extensive resume in national security. It essentially takes up the first half the article.
Hounshell describes Rep. Stefanik as a “pro-Trump bomb thrower.”
Ultimately, Hounshell concludes that Castelli doesn’t have much of a chance in the district, although I sense the Poughkeepsie native will do better than Tedra Cobb did last time out.
Hounshell did manage to get Rep. Stefanik on the phone and she told him, “If he wants to run as a Joe Biden Democrat, good luck. The only Joe Biden signs you see in this district have expletives with them.”
True story
This story from last week shows how ridiculous our politics have become.
Apparently, Rep. Elise Stefanik ran into her Democratic opponent Matt Castelli at the Washington County Fair where someone snapped a photo of Castelli shaking Stefanik’s hand while she held her 1-year-old son. They both seem to be smiling, too. It’s a nice photo.
Castelli’s campaign posted the photo on Twitter with the caption, “The great Washington County Fair welcomes folks from all over, including this nice family from outside of #NY21.” It was a clear jibe that because of redistricting, Stefanik no longer lived in the district. Considering the political climate, this was pretty mild.
But Stefanik’s husband, Matt Manda, didn’t think so.
A few hours later, he tweeted this demand: “@castellimatt delete this photo immediately and never post a pic of our 1-year-old son again.”
The weird part is that Manda included the photo again to further expose his child’s image to the public. The implication seemed to be that Castelli was putting Manda’s child in danger by posting the image. Manda is currently the manage of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation,” a group that promotes hunting and shooting sports.
To his credit, Castelli deleted the photo.
And so did Manda.
But to confuse things even further, many other people retweeted posts from Rep. Stefanik of her with her 1-year-old son at campaign events.
Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.
Tweet of the Day
I guess I’m peeved that we are working so hard at getting to th3e moon when we can’t after ALL these years get an Equal Rights Amendment securing equality for all women.
Thanks for the very interesting Space news that I was not totally aware of & humorous baby/politics info comments. I look forward every week, thanks.