Moon Rocket Launched, Exercise, About BaseballTV

 On December 7th,1972, Apollo 17 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Being the sixth lunar landing mission, it would be 53+ years before a return mission was sent there.  Artemis II lifted off early yesterday evening without incident, and its passengers are well on their multi-day circling of Earth's unusual, unitary natural satellite.  It was still broad daylight at launch time, and while sitting in our front yard facing east we saw absolutely no sign of the spaceship or its trail for several minutes following the launch.  Obama said we didn't need to go to the moon because "we've already been there', which I thought was wastefully dismissive if not arrogant.  This morning I finally arose at six, running in place for four minutes and brewing a K-cup of coffee.  A man is coming over to our house to remove the old plastic shed and rendet the back yard a simpler place without such an encumbrance.  I read some pages in Joshua Khan's Shadow Magic, intending to go further into it today.  For me, it has too many convoluted plot twists: who's the real culprit, and how does its ending slide into the next book?And I plan to watch some MLB regular reason baseball on that subscription channel, come afternoon or early evening.  And a modest attempt at some c-v home floor exercise should do the trick as well.  And how about a little more sleep, no? Let's see, I'll do four more minutes running in place and then I'll give it a nice break...  

Artemis I Successfully Returns, Future Lunar Missions Scheduled

The Artemis I NASA mission to the Moon and back was finally completed with a successful splashdown return on December 11th.  It was unmanned and designed to test the SLS launch rocket and Orion spacecraft and systems, as well as the Earth-based command center.  After some delays lasting months, it was finally launched on November 26th, with the Orion craft eventually making many lunar orbits over a span of six days, performing various maneuvers and taking spectacular photos both of the Moon and Earth off in the distance before returning to Earth.  I'm happy to see this concerted return to human deep space exploration after nearly half a century of doing little more than go around Earth in low orbit.  The next Artemis mission is scheduled for May, 2024 and will featured a human crew that will also orbit the Moon and return...after that, the way should be open for the first human landing on our Moon the following year, for the first time in 52+ years.  This time around, hopefully, we'll keep our presence there permanent with a planned Moon base.  The media coverage for all this is scant, with little popular interest...I'm not sure that this is a bad thing after thinking about it: it's all those voices complaining about investing money, time and effort into space exploration instead of pursuing their agendas that has, in large part, created this unnecessary gap in human deep space exploration and settlement.  May the future Artemis missions continue to be successful...