George Hahn

It isn't a good way of doing science and funds are being drained from the real science that NASA does.

But according to John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of its Space Policy Institute, exploration is about testing the belief that humans can become a multi-planetary species.

We have to be able to live off the land and do something worthwhile, he wrote in response to Weinberg.

Exploration lets us find out whether both of these are possible.

I believe the question isn't whether or not to send humans, but which humans to send.

Stories deploy audience surrogates, i.e.

heroes.

As Will Storr, author of The Science of Storytelling, wrote, the human brain is a story processor designed to absorb the story world of the groups we identify with.

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek to tell stories about the mostly human and Vulcan, i.e.

humanoid, Enterprise crew, not the ship.

As Captain Kirk said at the beginning of each episode, it was about people choosing to boldly go where no man has gone before.

In 2021, when Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson began selling six-, seven-, and eight-figure tickets to the Kármán line, I wrote that they were a new breed of space traveler, the Egonauts.

Nobody identified with these imposters.

We paid attention to their rocket-powered branding events with a mix of loathing, mockery, morbid curiosity, and the sinking feeling that billionaires would rather burn cash on their Martian escape fantasies than pay taxes to make Earth more habitable.

Artemis II is a different story, because these are our astronauts.

They are us.

Three years ago, then-NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of the Artemis II crew, Each has his or her own story, but together they embody our credo, e pluribus unum, or, out of many, one.

Commander Weissman is a formal naval aviator and decorated test pilot.

He's also a single dad who named a lunar crater after his wife, Carol, who died of cancer in 2020.

His crew is equally exceptional.