We should perhaps not be surprised that a mission called Artemis is to fly in the footsteps of Apollo and take astronauts back into deep space.
After all, in a year in which a new instalment of The Lord of the Rings, another Star Wars spin-off and another Star Trek-inspired TV show are in the works, why would the powers-that-be overlook the greatest fantasy epic of them all, the 1969 Apollo mission itself? What better to reboot than what were, for a few glorious years, the most famous boots in the world, those setting foot for the first time on an extra-terrestrial surface, on mankind’s eternal guardian and sentinel, no less – the Moon.
The mission, which launches today, even follows the playbook that governs Hollywood reboots. While not challenging Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s near-final form of ‘diversity’, with virtually no men of recognisably European extraction at all, the lunar mission will return in a gender swap for the ages: Apollo has been replaced with Artemis, the Graeco-Roman god’s girl-boss twin sister. Artemis is Rey to Apollo’s Luke, Galadriel to Apollo’s Aragorn, Nahla Ake (captain of the USS Athena, funnily enough) to Apollo’s Kirk.
In some regards, the NASA mission is not quite as eccentric as Hollywood. DEI considerations are clearly visible in the four-strong squad actually riding in the warhead, but all are well qualified in traditional terms and, on the ground, NASA is at least still staffed by top scientists and engineers. And unlike the new Lord of the Rings proposal, which will adapt scenes from the books that didn’t appear in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, Artemis is at least intended to retell the whole story, and then start layering in sequels.
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