Apollo astronauts suffered much after their return to Earth. Will those on Artemis?
My third year undergraduate physics project was to measure the heights of mountains on the Moon. I didn’t get to go to the Moon, but, instead, had to take the best photographs I could through the university telescopes and calculate the heights from the lengths of shadows.
The project has stuck in my imagination, not because of the science, which, trust me, had vanishingly small value, but because the experience was tremendous, even spiritual. I could half-kid myself that I had visited the Moon, or at least had had a very good look. And that changed me.
The astronauts on Artemis II have returned to Earth safely. But the end of their journey from the far side of the Moon also marks the beginning of another. You can’t come close to another world and remain unaffected. And, if the astronauts from the Apollo missions are anything to go by, working out what just happened will not be straightforward.
Continue reading at my Substack, A Golden String…