As a flight returns from beyond the moon

The safe return of Artemis, with its four astronauts, reminded me of my boyhood  and the thrill of following the Gemini and Apollo flights.

Some time in the school year that began around Labor Day 1969, a friend and classmate of mine named Pat showed me a poem he had written on how inspired he was by space exploration, and especially by the safe return of the Apollo 11 astronauts after their landing on the moon.

It was a well-written poem for a 6th grader.  But he had chosen a picky critic.  I noted that he had described the return of this flight as a thing happening in spring.  Chiefly because thing and spring rhyme. 

I pointed out, "the moon flight took place in July." 

He thought about it and said he was not going to try to change the masterpiece. After all, thing and spring rhyme so nicely. 

Well, they do. The following couplet also rhymes:

It is hard to surpass the cosmic-sized bummer

Of not having a rhyme for a flight in mid summer.

Anyway: I am very glad humanity is returning to the moon.  One point that comes to mind is that the first time around we did it in a jerry-rigged way.  The deaths of Apollo 1, the crisis of vulnerable Apollo 13, both arose from the hurried political schedule -- this had to be done by the end of the decade, The containment of Soviet Communism had become bound up with it. 

Now we are doing lunar exploration in a more methodical way, a way that could well result in turning Earth-to-moon flight into the equivalent of a longish truck haul. Important but safe and boring. 

Will we jerry-rig our way to Mars while that is happening? 

Who knows?  But this time, a critical thing DID happen in spring. 

Score one for Pat.