Joel Achenbach

But, you know, I was old enough to watch the Apollo program, and it was thrilling and exciting.

We did not have back in 1969 and 1970 and 71 anything like the ability to document a moon mission like we do today.

So visually, this has been stunning.

The astronauts also, they're doing a lot of experiments.

There are a lot of biological experiments to see what happens to their bodies.

This is different from going up to the International Space Station, which is

about 250 miles above the surface.

You know, they're out there, you know, 250,000 miles away.

I mean, yes, we've been to the moon before.

And frankly, you know, Apollo 13 did a kind of a similar kind of mission where they did the flyby.

But we have the ability scientifically to do experiments that no one did back in the late 60s or early 70s.

Well, I mean, there is this notion that we're in a race against China to get to the lunar South Pole where there are resources that are coveted by both countries.

There's water ice, permanently shadowed craters have water ice in them.

There are some mountains there that are always in sunlight where you could potentially have solar panels.

energy sources.

And there is a notion that in the coming decades, there is going to be a trillion dollar space economy and the moon is a good platform for operating.

But this has been a great week for NASA.

So let's just applaud them at the moment for how well this has gone and how

how brilliant the astronauts have been.

And it's just it's been it's just been fun to watch.