All Eyes On Artemis II

Launch complex 39B
Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)

Years ago, I was wandering through an antique shop along the Treasure Coast where I live and came across a bin filled with maps, posters of fish and other images. Buried at the bottom were two, hi-res images taken of Cape Canaveral: the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the other of launch complex 39B. What makes this launch pad so special is that it was used for the Apollo and Shuttle missions and now by SpaceX and the Artemis Missions.

The owner furrowed his brow when I brought them up to the counter. He was a space buff himself and didn’t know he had these, asking where I got them from. Fortunately for me, he got distracted by another customer and sold them to me before seeing what these images were actually of. The cool thing about the image of the VAB is that it has United States Bicentennial emblem. Since the paint looks relatively crisp and there is quite a bit of construction/activity in the foreground consistent with the Bicentennial Exposition, this shot was likely taken in 1976 or 1977.


Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo and Goddess of the Moon. A fitting tribute for a mission focused on establishing a long-term presence on the lunar surface.

The rocket and Orion were rolled out to Launch Pad 39B just four days ago (March 20). NASA is currently targeting April 1, 2026, at 6:24 PM EDT for the first launch attempt.

If all systems are Go, we will watch four astronauts orbit the moon and return to Earth, using spacecraft never used before. Below is a link on BBC.com, which takes you through the the interactive parts of the ship.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-86aafe5a-17e2-479c-9e12-3a7a41e10e9e

The four-person crew was selected not just for their flight experience, but to represent a “global” approach to lunar exploration. As of today, March 24, 2026, they have already begun their pre-launch quarantine in Houston.

RoleAstronautBackground / Fun Fact
CommanderReid Wiseman (NASA)A naval aviator who previously spent 165 days on the ISS.
PilotVictor Glover (NASA)He will be the first person of color to go to the Moon.
Mission SpecialistChristina Koch (NASA)Holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman; she will be the first woman to go to the Moon.
Mission SpecialistJeremy Hansen (CSA)A colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and the first non-American to leave Earth’s orbit.

I will be watching the launch from my backyard looking north, where weekly SpaceX Starlink deployments rise through the cloudless skies. It never gets old and renews the excitement of reading Science Fiction as a teen, with each flight.

Godspeed!

3 Ships built per day, 1000 per year

When President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation in 1962 and declared that we would go to the Moon—not because it was easy, but because it was hard—he lit a fire that carried a generation into the stars. It was bold. Audacious. A promise that seemed impossible… until it wasn’t. Today, that spirit is alive again—but this time, it’s not coming from the Oval Office. It’s rising from the dust at Starbase Texas with Elon Musk.

As a kid, I’d lie in bed with a flashlight tucked under the covers, devouring Sci-Fi Pulp Fiction novellas long past bedtime. Back then, those glowing pages were portals—each word a beam of light teleporting visions straight into my mind. I saw moon bases, rocket ports, and human settlements scattered across the solar system. Those futures felt far-off but inevitable—like watching the first glint of dawn and knowing full daylight would follow. Not knowing then, I realized later that science Fiction is fact waiting to happen.

Now, that imagined future is solidifying into steel and launch pads on the Gulf Coast. Starbase, Texas—once a stretch of quiet shoreline—is transforming into the first entirely new city in decades, and more than that, it’s becoming the cradle of space colonization. Not just another launch site, but a functional city with its eyes pointed skyward. What once was fiction whispered to a child by flashlight is now a blueprint being built in daylight.

Most Americans haven’t quite absorbed this shift yet. The scale of it—what it means to have regular rockets, self-landing boosters, orbital refueling, and crews preparing to build on other worlds—still hovers just outside the public consciousness. But make no mistake: history will point to this moment and say, this is when it began. Not with flags planted in dust, but with concrete poured Texas and Florida, with dreams launched on reusable wings.

And Elon has managed to develop what feels like alien technology—without raiding the vaults of Area 51 or unsealing some forgotten Pentagon file. No secret spacecraft reverse-engineered from crash sites. No whispered hand-me-downs from shadowy defense contractors. Just the sheer force of vision, engineering, and iteration. It’s almost more unbelievable that way.

What we’re witnessing isn’t the result of hidden knowledge—it’s the result of someone who seems to think like an alien. A mind unbound by convention. While the aerospace establishment took baby steps, Elon sprinted past them, leapfrogging entire generations of tech. He didn’t wait for permission. He didn’t wait for NASA to go first. He moved fast, broke what needed breaking, and built a new space industry from the molten core of ambition.

In a way, Elon is our own alien developer—not from another planet, but from another mindset. He didn’t arrive in a saucer; he arrived with software updates and stainless steel prototypes. He doesn’t hide behind secrecy—he invites the world to watch. He tweets engineering problems. He launches Starships like we used to launch dreams.

The spacecraft we imagined hidden away in desert bunkers? He’s landing them upright on drone ships, catching them with chopsticks, naming them after science fiction AIs, and prepping them for Mars. And doing it all in plain sight.

Starbase, Texas, is not the endgame—it’s the launchpad for a civilization becoming interplanetary. A century from now, schoolchildren might look back and say: It didn’t come from aliens. It came from us. From a man who thought like no one else, and dared to build the future while the rest of the world waited for it to arrive.

This should be the most important 40 minutes shown in every classroom—a powerful antidote to the scrolling addiction that’s hijacking a generation’s focus, purpose, and potential.