Toward Ecosophy

Those of you who know your way around 1970s prog rock may remember the Jethro Tull song "Orion," from the glorious album Stormwatch. I've got it playing right now on my stereo, as a little celebration of the successful completion of the Artemis II lunar flyby mission with the splashdown of the Orion space capsule with four intact astronauts on board. As regular readers will recall, I didn't expect the United States to manage this again during my lifetime; the fact that this far down the curve of economic and social decline, we could still manage a good imitation of the glory days of the Apollo program startled and pleased me. 

It bears recalling that Artemis is in fact an imitation of the Apollo program. Single-use capsules atop disposable booster rockets were supposed to be as obsolete as the Model T Ford by now; the Space Shuttle was supposed to be the first of a whole sequence of reusable spacecraft that would make space travel as routine as taking a jet from New York to Paris. Yet here we are in 2026 with a slightly upgraded Apollo-style spacecraft, on top of a cobbled-together "Space Launch System" that's basically a reconfigured Space Shuttle booster system -- that was the only option once the Constellation booster program bogged down terminally in cost overruns and engineering problems. 

In other words, the Orion capsule and the Artemis program generally is another successful demonstration of the power of retro technology. I don't recommend saying that too loudly just now, though! 

Back in 2011, I posted one of the most widely read of my online essays, "An Elegy for the Age of Space":

https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/an-elegy-for-age-of-space.html

As readers will notice, I didn't expect the International Space Station to have its lifespan prolonged for more than a decade past its original scheduled deorbiting. I did note that there would be efforts to keep pursuing the failed dream of infinite expansion into space. I remain as convinced as I was then that a meaningful response to the converging crises of our time would involve redirecting as many resources as possible away from high-tech daydreams and toward the transformations that will get us prepared for America's post-imperial and post-industrial future.

At this point, though, I see no reasonable chance that this approach will be taken by anyone outside of a few fringe subcultures. We're going to do this the hard way, and the capacity to copy the achievements of America's glory days, or even push past them a little at great cost, doesn't change that. 

That said, I've lifted a glass already to the hard work of the NASA personnel and space-program subcontractors who made this happen, and the courage of four astronauts who put their lives on the line in what is, after all, a far from risk-free voyage.  I used to watch space launches on TV when I was a child, and it was something to see that happen again now that I'm in my sixties.