TOM EATON | Artemis foul: this time, who’s over the moon?

One small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind, then some moon golf for mankind, then nothing for 54 years, and now a fly-by with no steps or leaps but quite a lot of anxious leg-jiggling as you reflect on being 380,000km from the nearest working toilet: our voyage to the stars has certainly taken a curious turn.

Of course I don’t want to make light of the Artemis II mission currently underway. The science is very impressive, and some of the pictures coming back are breathtaking if you’ve never seen grey dust before. The images of the Earth, too, are almost as good as the ones taken in the 1970s.

It’s also quite historic, in that it is a thing that is happening in history, and inevitably makes one think about how far we’ve come and how much has changed. For example, back then, humankind’s journey into space was being led by German scientists who’d eagerly collaborated with warmongering fascists if it allowed them to keep building rockets, whereas now it is the likes of Elon Musk who … oh, wait, I’m hearing it now. Never mind.

My point is that I’m struggling to get excited about Artemis, and, while this could be a failing on my part, I suspect there might be some extenuating circumstances, like the fact that our collective story now seems to have turned into a sort of inverted Star Trek in which idealism and humanism are outlawed and, if you do go boldly where no-one has gone before, you instantly put a fence around it and start strip mining it.

It probably also didn’t help that I spent some time over the weekend witnessing the online convulsions of the rapidly growing community of flat earthers.

Of course, very few of the people howling about fake pictures from Artemis or trotting out illustrations of a disk with water sloshing over the side actually believe what they’re saying: like support for Trumpism or evangelical Christianity, the tenets of the belief system are simply things you say to each other to confirm membership of a community and to revel in the criticism from outsiders that confirms and strengthens your identity as a persecuted truth-teller.

Still, it’s hard to celebrate scientific progress while being reminded that for millions of people, a vacuum is something you fill not with spaceships but with anything that will make you feel less unhappy, and that first contact doesn’t need to feature aliens when it’s being made by alienated people finding each other through a desperation to feel seen.

Mostly, however, I’m struggling to get into the moon-shot spirit because it’s so clearly a creation of and for the oligarchical classes and their dystopian visions of our future.

It’s right there on the label. This is all about going out, killing a wild thing and carving it up.

This isn’t a lefty conspiracy, by the way: everyone has been quite open about the fact that Artemis II is part of long-term plan to establish a permanent base on the moon, partly to extract whichever mineral goodies are there and also to serve as a launching pad to Mars, because, as every tech billionaire who’s never been parented knows, what we really need is to abandon this planet and go and live in literally the most horrible place we can reach.

Perhaps as a writer I’m too invested in symbolism, but even the name feels grubby.

Project Mercury was named after the messenger who flew between Earth and the gods. The Gemini missions were all about twins: two astronauts per vehicle, two spacecraft manoeuvering side by side. Apollo, the god of music and poetry, lit up the heavens with his flying chariot.

Artemis, however, is the goddess of the hunt. It’s right there on the label. This is all about going out, killing a wild thing and carving it up.

Of course, the astronauts aren’t to blame. They’re scientists having all their dreams come true, and soon they’ll come back and tell us about the small blue dot, and how fragile and beautiful it is, and how there’s no place like it.

Those who agree with them will smile and nod, but in a tired sort of way, because they know that it won’t change anyone’s minds, not really.

And those who don’t care and who are determined to take humanity to Mars — or at least take humans there — will simply get on with the vital business of ripping the planks out of this tiny blue lifeboat of ours, to sell to each other for yet more money they can’t spend.