Scott Detrow

And that is a huge challenge to think through all of that.

Artemis II is effectively a test flight.

If anything goes wrong for the Artemis crew between the Earth and the Moon, resources, the forces of gravity, and just sheer distance from everybody else makes the contingency plan very different.

That's Morbid Jaw, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at UT Austin.

Which is why, as Jeremy Hansen underscored, all the training and preparation on the ground is so essential.

Assuming everything goes according to plan, though, the crew has quite the to-do list and quite the view.

Here's Cook.

I do wonder, like, when you think about your mindset, when you think about what you have to do, how much just the enormity of going to the moon, do you let the Neil Armstrong of it all kind of get into your head day to day?

Scott, as you were asking that question, that's very similar.

But I have to expand two seconds because last night I was –

in bed, get ready to go to sleep.

And it's that started like thinking about riding this gigantic rocket going all the way out to the moon with Christina, Victor, Jeremy.

And I had to get up and go for a walk around my living room for a second, because I just couldn't get myself back into the mode of going to sleep.

And I knew I needed to rest.

But sometimes it does, sometimes it hits you.

And then most of the time, it's just a, it's just a kind of in the background.

The world has changed a lot since astronauts last flew to the moon more than a half century ago.

The sum total of the computing technology that powered the Apollo missions is inside most people's pockets.

It's on their wrists.

So after more than half a century, going back to the moon, it feels long overdue.