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Why Artemis II is a defining moment for humanity · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:09
  You are listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Out Loud Talk Radio.
• 0:13
  I'm your host, Jimmy Hinton.
• 0:15
  Well, it finally happened on April Fool's Day of all days.
• 0:21
  The irony in this is a little bit funny.
• 0:25
  But on April 1st, April Fool's Day, we launched into space on a mission to the moon.
• 0:34
  And it was spectacular.
• 0:35
  Folks, I uh I had done a show on this before, just talking about how brilliant it is and how cool it is that we live in a time that I I believe wholeheartedly that we take for granted.
• 0:49
  We live in a time where uh technology is so convenient.
• 0:54
  All of our modern conveniences are incredible.
• 0:57
  Think about how easy life has gotten in the last, even in the last 10 years.
• 1:03
  I mean it it is absolutely incredible.
• 1:07
  The uh ability to talk to people across the world instantly, anywhere in the world.
• 1:15
  Uh the speed of internet and uh the easy access to any online services.
• 1:24
  Think about counseling.
• 1:25
  Uh my mom and I were just talking about this the other day.
• 1:28
  You don't even have to leave your house.
• 1:32
  If you don't have transportation, if you have problems getting out for fairly cheap internet, you can get online counseling.
• 1:41
  You never have to leave your house, and in really good quality, too.
• 1:46
  And on and on the list goes.
• 1:48
  Uh we live in such a convenient time.
• 1:53
  And yet, people complain.
• 1:55
  They complain about everything.
• 1:58
  And uh, I guess that's part of why I really don't have a lot of tolerance for it.
• 2:02
  It's just that it rubs me the wrong way, and ma'am, we ought to be so grateful.
• 2:08
  God is blessing us beyond compare.
• 2:11
  Uh, I I have never known a time in history where we are as blessed as what we are right now in 2026, and I know things are hard, prices are high, um, inflation is high, but so are the opportunities.
• 2:33
  There are endless opportunities that are opening up every single day.
• 2:39
  Endless opportunities to excel, to succeed, to do well.
• 2:44
  Uh, my kids see it, my kids fortunately, I think, really grasp that they understand it.
• 2:51
  Uh, part of that is I I think a big part of that is because they're taught by their mother and I'm taught that we have to seize opportunities.
• 3:03
  You you don't sit around and wait for things to fall in your lap, and therefore we shouldn't take anything for granted.
• 3:10
  So I it's so there's so so many ironies in the uh the launch of uh Artemis 2 with the Artemis 2 mission.
• 3:24
  Orion is is uh currently uh in orbit on its way to the moon, and it's just that this this whole thing from start to finish, it is spectacular.
• 3:38
  And do you know how many of you actually heard about it?
• 3:41
  How many of you knew?
• 3:44
  How many of you were ready to watch it live or did watch it live?
• 3:51
  And I gotta tell you, I knew about it, and I still I had to check.
• 3:56
  I had to check the internet and be like, oh, okay, when is the live launch going to be?
• 4:04
  Because there was nothing about it in the news.
• 4:08
  Nothing.
• 4:09
  It's all Donald Trump.
• 4:11
  Donald Trump is like the focus of every single media outlet, period.
• 4:19
  The world is obsessed with him, and it's that's one of the ironies here.
• 4:26
  All right, one of the ironies is I see people on the left talking about how they've made Donald Trump into their god, that they obsess about Donald Trump, and all they think about and talk about is Donald Trump, and I'm like, wait, uh it's this is all the left talks about.
• 4:45
  I mean, it and it's so unfortunate that everybody's so obsessed with Donald Trump.
• 4:54
  Everybody that things like Artemis 2, the launch of Artemis 2, get completely buried.
• 5:04
  Now, let me give you an example.
• 5:06
  This was I I went through and I documented this.
• 5:11
  All right, I did screenshots.
• 5:13
  Because I I was curious.
• 5:15
  Like hours after the launch.
• 5:18
  This was something like I don't know, 16 hours after the launch.
• 5:23
  Let me go through all, not all, some of the major news outlets.
• 5:28
  Let me show you what the stories are.
• 5:31
  You're ready for this.
• 5:33
  This is front page.
• 5:34
  You land on their page, and these are the stories.
• 5:38
  16 hours after Artemis 2.
• 5:41
  We have not been to the moon in over 50 years.
• 5:46
  The 55 years since we first went to the moon.
• 5:51
  55 years.
• 5:54
  This is unprecedented.
• 5:57
  By the way, I'll talk about Victor Glover too.
• 6:00
  Uh, really, really cool guy, super good Christian guy.
• 6:03
  The first black man to ever go to the moon.
• 6:09
  Uh, we have a space crew that will be the farthest from Earth ever in the history of mankind, ever.
• 6:19
  When they reach the backside of the moon, their particular orbit will take them the farthest that man has ever been in space ever.
• 6:30
  Here are the headlines.
• 6:31
  16 hours after lunch.
• 6:34
  Fox News.
• 6:35
  Iran regime uses war to mask brutal execution and surge against political opponents.
• 6:42
  Justice Jackson revealed the real threat to free speech in America, skyrocketing campus violence could meet its match after pro-Trump group makes big move.
• 6:51
  Grocery giant closing stores and slashing jobs nationwide following merger collapse.
• 6:57
  Carville says Dems will prosecute Trump's family and their spouses after midterms.
• 7:04
  Does marijuana cause cause lung cancer?
• 7:07
  Cruise ships stuck in golf ports as companies cancel April sailings, disrupting vacations.
• 7:24
  So I'm scrolling down, down, down, down, down, all the way to the very bottom of the page.
• 7:36
  And I took shots all the way down.
• 7:39
  And at the very bottom.
• 7:42
  I mean, very bottom.
• 7:45
  In a tiny little thumbnail.
• 7:47
  I actually missed it the first time we went through.
• 7:50
  Tiny little thumbnail, Artemis 2 launch hailed as defining moment for U.S.
• 7:55
  and future lunar exploration.
• 7:58
  At the very bottom of the front page.
• 8:02
  This is 16 hours after launch.
• 8:07
  CNN.
• 8:11
  Oil prices surge on Trump's vow to hit Iran extremely hard.
• 8:17
  Then it was a bunch of stuff about his speech.
• 8:44
  Trump expected to impose new tariffs on certain pharmaceutical drugs.
• 8:51
  Let's see, going down, down, down, down, nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 8:57
  Man charged in connection with two decades old Texas killing fields.
• 9:06
  All right.
• 9:06
  Artemis 2 is absolutely buried.
• 9:13
  CBS news.
• 9:15
  Frage.
• 9:18
  Oil prices rise after Trump insists the Iran war is going to plan.
• 9:25
  Senate takes first step toward ending DHS shutdown after house GOP reversal.
• 9:32
  And again, going down and finally, actually, they they did it.
• 9:36
  It's small.
• 9:37
  They're tiny little thumbnails.
• 9:38
  These are not headline stories, but there are a couple stories on the Artemis 2 launch.
• 9:45
  Artemis 2 launches into orbit as NASA begins historic moon mission.
• 9:55
  Very front, I mean, every one of these, the very first story is it's it's like.
• 10:00
  Like a big blown up picture of Donald Trump.
• 10:04
  Like massive.
• 10:07
  It kind of slaps you right in the eye as soon as you open up their page.
• 10:12
  MS Now, something critical was missing from Trump's address to the nation.
• 10:18
  And again, Trump's ballroom blitz leaves a hole in the White House.
• 10:23
  On and on and on.
• 10:25
  I actually don't see anything on their page about the Artemis II mission.
• 10:33
  Down all the way to the bottom, didn't see a single thing.
• 10:36
  Nothing.
• 10:39
  All right, so you get the picture.
• 10:42
  This was an absolute historic event.
• 10:48
  One of the biggest events in the entire world in the history of the world.
• 10:56
  And we get crickets.
• 10:59
  Absolute crickets.
• 11:02
  And it's not just crickets.
• 11:11
  Donald Trump here are the things that are wrong with his speech that he gave Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, and in case he missed it, Donald Trump.
• 11:24
  I mean, what is wrong with these people?
• 11:28
  They they couldn't pause these stories for a minute.
• 11:32
  And this just proves, in my opinion, this proves that the media is absolutely rigged.
• 11:42
  They want they want the views, they want the outrage, they want people to be upset, they want people to be uh angry and to feel like there's all this disunity and all these terrible things are happening in the world, and it's all Donald Trump who's causing pain in the world.
• 12:00
  If there's any pain anywhere in the world, it's all because of Donald Trump.
• 12:07
  Orange Man is causing all of this.
• 12:10
  And the world is probably coming to an end.
• 12:14
  And you know, we're we're living in Armageddon.
• 12:20
  And I want to paint the picture that we have a historic event that ought to unify the entire world.
• 12:31
  I'm talking everybody from villages and Timbuktu to the United States of America to the wealthiest homes in America.
• 12:44
  This ought to unify everybody in the world.
• 12:48
  And in fact, I'm gonna play a clip by Victor Glover.
• 12:52
  He's the one that uh I was talking about.
• 12:54
  And the reason I want to talk about him today is because number one, he's just a really cool guy, but uh the whole crew is but he's the first black man to uh ever journey to the moon, which is massive.
• 13:10
  Like that wasn't even in these news stories.
• 13:15
  It's it's just like they're not highlighting this stuff.
• 13:18
  Instead, they're saying, well, how racist we are as Americans, and you know, we're just terrible, everybody's terrible people, and anybody who voted for Trump, they're racist, Trump is racist.
• 13:29
  That's the narrative, but the reality is that we had a black president, which was amazing, absolutely incredible.
• 13:44
  More than half of America voted for a black president twice.
• 13:51
  I mean, if that's not progress towards unity, I I just don't know what is.
• 14:01
  Out of how many billions of people are on the earth, and there are four who get to go to the moon.
• 14:09
  Four.
• 14:11
  Four.
• 14:12
  Four people in the entire world were selected for this mission.
• 14:18
  And we have a woman who's part of the crew.
• 14:22
  I mean, this is incredible.
• 14:25
  You want to talk about unity?
• 14:27
  You want to talk about taking a step forward as mankind?
• 14:31
  This is incredible.
• 14:32
  But let me play a clip by Victor Glover.
• 14:35
  This is awesome.
• 14:38
  This was on 60 minutes, and they were talking about when they get on the back side of the moon, there's going to be a period of about 40 minutes when the Artemis 2 crew loses contact with Earth.
• 14:50
  They'll be complete uh silenced, they'll be on their own, totally shut off from any communication back to Earth.
• 15:01
  Here's what Victor Glover had to say.
• 15:04
  I love it.
• 15:06
  Of about 40 minutes when you will be out of contact with the Earth.
• 15:12
  That's when we will be closest to the moon, farthest from the Earth.
• 15:16
  But it also is a human moment, you know.
• 15:18
  And I would love for us to have a moment of togetherness for humans to just go, hey, there's a part of humanity that's not in touch with the rest of us.
• 15:27
  And let's just get them all back.
• 15:28
  And then we can go back to the hustle and bustle.
• 15:30
  But I hope that that inspires folks to just have a moment of togetherness.
• 15:35
  Isn't that cool?
• 15:37
  Uh hey, in that moment, in that 40 minutes where we're cut off from Earth, and Earth is cut off from I I hope that in that 40 minutes that humanity can just come together and just grasp that.
• 15:54
  Grasp the power and the magnitude of that moment.
• 15:58
  I hope that inspires humanity to have a moment of togetherness.
• 16:04
  Uh how cool is that.
• 16:07
  And he's still right.
• 16:08
  And the other the other uh astronauts, his crew members, they're looking at him.
• 16:13
  Uh they're they're all kind of looking at him and they're smiling and they're nodding their heads.
• 16:17
  Like, yeah.
• 16:18
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:21
  And uh, man, it's just such a powerful moment and such a powerful picture, and there's so much to unpack here.
• 16:29
  I'm gonna unpack some of this uh as as the show unfolds, but man, it's just such a big moment.
• 16:35
  That was a three and a half million pound uh rocket, and these guys were strapped for humans strapped on top of that thing.
• 16:44
  Three and a half million pounds, and it was breathtaking to watch.
• 16:49
  I mean, absolutely stunning to watch this thing, and uh to see it go so flawlessly.
• 16:56
  Uh man, what a major step for mankind.
• 17:00
  Very, very cool.
• 17:02
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• 19:30
  Some irony in that, a little bit of humor.
• 19:39
  And he's uh he's my aviation nerd and space nerd and uh just a science genius, and uh so he he was really into it, but he said, Hey dad, wouldn't that be funny if they actually launched the day before April Fool's Day?
• 19:57
  Now he said this as we're watching the line.
• 20:00
  He said, wouldn't it be funny if they actually launched yesterday or even a couple days ago and they already orbited the moon and they're on their way back, and then uh we're watching the launch is as if it's happening now, and then they just said April Fools, they're actually uh already on their way back to Earth, and then they cut to a view, and I was like, yeah, that'd be pretty funny.
• 20:25
  So, you know, we were running all these different scenarios, and we're like, it's it's just ironic that that's the day that it landed on, but that was the window that had the best weather, and uh all systems were go, and they took it.
• 20:39
  They had a two-hour window, and there's not a lot of margin for air, so uh everything was was a go, and it actually went really, really smoothly.
• 20:48
  The launch itself was very smooth, and uh even that alone.
• 20:54
  I mean, if if for whatever reason the mission ends up failing, which uh anything can happen, uh man, the launch alone was was just it was really flawless, it was really incredible.
• 21:08
  But there is a great article by Stebias News, I think has one of the best articles.
• 21:15
  This is by William Harwood, and uh the title of the article is NASA's Artemis II astronauts bring wealth of experience to moon mission, meet the crew making history.
• 21:28
  The four Artemis II astronauts who launched on a trip around the moon this week stand out, even in a NASA astronaut core full of super achievers.
• 21:38
  They include three space station veterans and a Canadian rookie, a commander who is a single parent to two children, an experienced Navy pilot, a veteran spacewalker who will become the first woman to fly to the moon, and the first Canadian who will fly beyond low Earth orbit.
• 22:02
  All right, also uh, not only is she going to be the first woman to go to the moon, but she was on the crew of the first all-women's crew to do a spacewalk.
• 22:14
  She already made history, she's making history again, and this is just it's such a cool thing.
• 22:20
  There's so many different layers of history being made.
• 22:25
  We have the first black uh person to ever travel to the moon, the first woman to ever travel to the moon, the first Canadian to ever travel to the moon.
• 22:38
  I mean, like this they picked a really cool crew, and these guys really are.
• 22:42
  They're super cool guys and gal.
• 22:45
  Uh, they're just really, really cool.
• 22:48
  Uh so Christina said, how do we feel as the people that can call the moon a destination, not just something we're looking at.
• 22:59
  It's our strong hope that this mission is the start of an era where everyone, every person on Earth can look at the moon and think of it as also a destination.
• 23:13
  Uh, very, very cool.
• 23:16
  Again, these four crew were selected in April of 2023.
• 23:24
  They've spent the past three years training for a short nine-day mission to loop around the moon and set the stage for moon landings as early as 2028.
• 23:38
  Uh, and we're not just going to the moon.
• 23:41
  I mean, this is the thing.
• 23:43
  We're not just going to the moon checking it out and doing what we did in 1969 through 1972.
• 23:52
  They're building a lunar base near the moon's south pole.
• 23:57
  This is a huge feat.
• 24:00
  Absolutely, I mean, unprecedented.
• 24:04
  And this is to be the stepping stone for our going to Mars.
• 24:10
  And I guess that's still on the table.
• 24:12
  You don't hear a lot of talk about it anymore.
• 24:15
  Therefore, a while, Elon Musk was uh doing what he does.
• 24:20
  He overdelivers.
• 24:21
  He's like, Yeah, in the next you know, 30 minutes, we're gonna be uh sending people to Mars.
• 24:27
  Like his timelines are always hilarious.
• 24:31
  You notice he always has these really ambitious timelines.
• 24:35
  Uh, but he never never follows through with the timelines.
• 24:38
  They're always years, years off.
• 24:42
  But it's still pretty cool just to see what the possibilities are, and they're really endless.
• 24:50
  And I know a lot of people, there are a lot of conspiracy theorists, and I have friends who are like, well, we you know, the moon landing was faked, and they talk about all this stuff.
• 25:00
  And uh even Joe Rogan, Joe's like, yeah, I used to believe that we landed on the moon, but uh the more the more I look into it, the less I'm convinced, and uh it's I I get it, I get the skepticism because it's taken us years to be able to, I guess, get everything right.
• 25:25
  We were supposed to start in in I think 2022, they were talking about going to the moon.
• 25:30
  Well, then it got pushed and it got pushed, and now here we are, 2026, and we're not even gonna land on the moon.
• 25:37
  We're just kind of orbiting around it, which is really cool, don't get me wrong, super, super cool, but uh, we're not gonna start landing on the moon until at least at the very earliest, 2028.
• 25:54
  So a lot of people are like, well, it wasn't even I mean, at least seemingly it wasn't that hard in 1969, and we did it several times.
• 26:08
  We had multiple moon landings from 69 to 72, and then all of a sudden it just stopped.
• 26:13
  And the thing is, it's not just Americans who stopped going, it's the entire world.
• 26:21
  Nobody has been to the moon.
• 26:24
  Now we've sent uh rovers and and things like that.
• 26:30
  Like we've sent equipment to the moon, but not people.
• 26:34
  And uh it's really fascinating.
• 26:38
  So a lot of people are like, well, why is why has it been over 50 years since we've sent people to the moon?
• 26:46
  How's that even possible?
• 26:50
  Uh well, I've heard astronauts talk about it.
• 26:53
  I've heard uh people who've been to the moon, and they said, well, basically it boils down to we were spending a fortune, it was a huge part of the uh US budget was going to moon exploration, and you know, we the United States wanted to be the first ones to the moon.
• 27:15
  And uh it was it was a race to the moon, and once we got there, then it was kind of like, okay, well, now what?
• 27:23
  Do we keep pumping billions and billions of dollars into this program if if we don't have a goal, right?
• 27:33
  If our goal is just to send people to say that we did it, then it's maybe not the best use of our money, which is another irony, isn't it?
• 27:45
  Coming from our government, a little bit ironic.
• 27:51
  When the government says this isn't the best use of our money, you know, like something's up.
• 27:57
  Because they just they they blow trillions of dollars.
• 28:02
  So at any rate, uh it's really cool.
• 28:04
  So uh Reed Wiseman is the Artemis II commander.
• 28:10
  He's 50 years old, he was born in Baltimore, earned a degree in computer and systems engineering, has a master's degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University, became a naval aviator in 1999.
• 28:31
  Um he was a uh a U.S.
• 28:34
  Naval test pilot school flying F-35 and F-18 fighter jets.
• 28:42
  Uh then he was at sea when he was selected to join NASA's astronaut corps in 2009.
• 28:50
  He first flew to space in 2014, was 165 days in orbit on the International Space Station, completing two spacewalks that totaled 12 hours and 47 minutes.
• 29:10
  Uh his wife Carol died in 2020 after a long battle with cancer.
• 29:16
  And so for him, I imagine this is a pretty emotional moment for him.
• 29:24
  Um for him to to continue on after being a widow, uh I think is really impressive because this is not easy, and at his age, if 50 years old, uh this is hard on the body.
• 29:42
  So very, very cool.
• 29:44
  This is uh this is the commander.
• 29:48
  And he said about his kids, they would rather I not go.
• 29:51
  They would definitely rather I be a stay-at-home dad and hang out, but they also know that this is a unique opportunity.
• 29:58
  You know, the parents have to live.
• 30:00
  Their dreams, just like the kids have to live their dreams.
• 30:05
  And then there's the captain, Victor Glover.
• 30:10
  He's the uh pilot, U.S.
• 30:14
  Navy captain, the pilot of uh the Artemis 2 program.
• 30:20
  Born in California, he's 49 years old, married, father of four.
• 30:26
  He's a Christian.
• 30:27
  Uh, he's actually a very good friend of mine, very good uh reporter friend of mine has interviewed him before.
• 30:35
  And there's actually a uh it's it's the same paper.
• 30:39
  My friend is the editor of the Christian Chronicle.
• 30:42
  And I'll post uh I'll post this article in the show notes here.
• 30:46
  But this was an article that was done in an interview back in 2023.
• 30:51
  And uh it is excellent.
• 30:54
  BT Erwin was the podcast host who did the interview, and Victor Glover said there are no atheists on top of rockets, and I love that quote.
• 31:09
  So he served on the International Space Station and uh is the pilot of the Artemis 2 mission to the moon.
• 31:18
  Pretty big responsibility, obviously very smart dude.
• 31:23
  Uh he's the first black man to uh to go to the moon.
• 31:28
  So that's really cool.
• 31:30
  And just an interesting fact, he when he was on the International Space Station, uh, this is something that we were all talking about in The Churches of Christ, because we take communion every single week.
• 31:45
  Uh a lot of denominations don't do that, but we celebrate communion every week.
• 31:50
  When he was on the ISS, he took communion with him, and he broke bread and drank the fruit of the vine while he was on the International Space Station on Sundays, which was really, really cool.
• 32:05
  So he talked about how um, like he talks a lot about his faith.
• 32:09
  Obviously, that's that's just who he is.
• 32:13
  But he said, uh, my career is fed by my faith.
• 32:16
  And you know, anytime I do something that's pretty risky, I pray before I fly, every time I fly.
• 32:23
  I fly airplane airplanes a few times a week.
• 32:26
  Definitely when you go sit on top top of a rocket ship.
• 32:30
  And what was really cool is before they launched on April 1st.
• 32:35
  Victor put a message out to the world, and he said, please pray for us.
• 32:41
  Be in prayer for us while we're in space.
• 32:45
  So this is uh, you know, a definitely established pattern for him.
• 32:49
  He prays every single time that he goes up in an airplane.
• 32:54
  I think that's really cool.
• 32:56
  So he went on to say in that interview in 2023.
• 32:59
  He said in the military, there's a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes.
• 33:03
  There aren't any on top of rockets either, I would think.
• 33:08
  But it's just that uh it's not just that though.
• 33:14
  It's just recognizing my mortality.
• 33:17
  Like you said, how is discipline in this job connected to discipleship?
• 33:24
  It's really interesting to me how working at NASA evokes the conversation about creation.
• 33:31
  We talk about our solar system, and I will often refer to the beauty of creation.
• 33:36
  People hear that, and it's like a big trigger word for certain folks.
• 33:41
  But that's in the church and at NASA.
• 33:45
  When Christians hear I work at NASA, they want to talk about that.
• 33:49
  And also NASA folks want to talk about it.
• 33:52
  And so I I actually find that I do advocacy for both.
• 33:57
  And each one makes my commitment to the other stronger.
• 34:01
  So his commitment to NASA and to science makes his faith stronger, and his faith makes his commitment to NASA and science stronger.
• 34:12
  So he's calling that a two-way street, and he kind of elaborates that in in that uh podcast.
• 34:18
  So it's really cool.
• 34:19
  It's really cool to read about that.
• 34:21
  And uh he talks about how some Christians give him pushback, and he's like, Look, I think science and faith go hand in hand.
• 34:33
  Because a lot of Christians they're really anti-science, and I think that's unfortunate.
• 34:40
  And I I agree with him.
• 34:42
  I think that science and faith, they go hand in hand.
• 34:47
  And a lot of people who are scientists can't come to the conclusion that religion is anything more than just a bunch of wacko people making up a bunch of theories about a God who we know in in quotes, we know doesn't exist.
• 35:05
  So it's just really interesting when you have somebody who's a very brilliant scientist saying, Hey, look, um, science and and faith, they go hand in hand.
• 35:18
  So that's really cool.
• 35:20
  Really, really cool.
• 35:22
  There are no atheists on top of rockets.
• 35:25
  Uh what a cool saying.
• 35:28
  So I'm going to go back to this article about the crew.
• 35:33
  Uh Christina, the first woman.
• 35:38
  So Christina Cook, 47 years old.
• 35:42
  She was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 35:45
  That's my wife's stomping grounds.
• 35:47
  She uh was born and raised in Grand Rapids.
• 35:51
  Uh, but Christina Cook grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
• 35:55
  She's a surfer, rock climber, enjoys backpacking, photography, travel.
• 36:00
  She has a bachelor's degree in engineering, and uh studied abroad in Ghana.
• 36:06
  She worked as an electrical engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center before working as a research associate in Antarctica.
• 36:15
  That's pretty cool.
• 36:17
  Uh, she worked at Johns Hopkins University, helping develop science instruments for NASA's Juno probe, which is now orbiting Jupiter, and spacecraft designed to study the Van Allen radiation belts.
• 36:32
  Uh, very, very cool.
• 36:35
  Uh, she met her husband before becoming an astronaut.
• 36:39
  And uh that's pretty cool.
• 36:43
  Pretty, pretty cool.
• 36:44
  Well, we're coming up on a break, so I better, I better not get carried away.
• 36:48
  I'll pick up with Christina Cook here after.
• 36:50
  Uh, but I just wanted to introduce you to the astronauts, and there's a lot of stuff because you're not hearing about this in the news, and uh quite frankly, people, I'm just tired of uh people talking about Donald Trump all the time.
• 37:02
  So it's kind of refreshing to talk about heroes who are on the first lunar mission in more than 50 years.
• 37:10
  This is really incredible.
• 37:12
  Uh, we're coming up on a break here.
• 37:15
  All of our shows do go to podcast the next day after the broadcasts heard on talk radio.
• 37:20
  You can hear them on your favorite podcast app.
• 37:22
  Be sure to rate the show, share it, subscribe, all that good stuff.
• 37:27
  Visit America Outloud.news and use the code out loud when you visit the store for 20% off.
• 37:34
  We'll be right back.
• 37:35
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• 38:46
  Artemis 2 mission to the moon happened.
• 38:49
  It actually went through on April 1st.
• 38:54
  And it was such a magnificent thing to see.
• 38:57
  If you've seen any of the footage, I got to watch it live, and I was not going to miss that.
• 39:02
  We were actually at a Wednesday night Bible study, and I had my lesson all planned out, and uh I I looked at the time and I was like, man, we can't miss this.
• 39:14
  We have got so we watched it together as a group, and uh I was like, I am not missing this for anything.
• 39:20
  So got to watch it with my with my wife and my kids and all of my Bible study group people from church.
• 39:28
  So it really was a really cool thing.
• 39:30
  We got to pray for uh for the astronauts right before they launched, and it was magnificent to see uh a successful launch.
• 39:42
  And it really brought me back to uh when I when I was young and in school watching the challenger.
• 39:49
  Uh, we watched that live at school, and uh, I was talking to my kids about how traumatizing that was to watch the challenger because there was a lot of excitement about that, and that
• 40:00
  It also was a historic mission.
• 40:02
  And of course, it ended pretty quickly in tragedy, just seconds after takeoff.
• 40:09
  It was very unfortunate.
• 40:11
  So the one on April 1st, the Artemis 2 mission, it was definitely super high stakes.
• 40:19
  And it was magnificent to see that it went very successful.
• 40:25
  Christina Cook.
• 40:27
  We were talking about her.
• 40:29
  She is the mission specialist for Artemis 2.
• 40:33
  Surfer, rock climber, 47 years old.
• 40:37
  And she was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 40:42
  So Michigander there.
• 40:44
  That's pretty cool.
• 40:48
  She had she talked about this.
• 40:50
  This is really cool.
• 40:52
  She said, uh, to me, what it all comes down to is answering some of the biggest philosophical philosophical questions of our time.
• 41:00
  Are we alone?
• 41:01
  Could there be life out there?
• 41:04
  We have to know how our solar system formed, how other solar systems around other stars might have formed.
• 41:12
  And secondly, I think we go on to learn about ourselves when we're behind the moon and we're separated from the rest of humanity.
• 41:21
  Hopefully, that's a poignant moment where we can think to ourselves what is important when you send other humans off the planet.
• 41:30
  What do we care about?
• 41:32
  What unites us?
• 41:34
  What makes us the same?
• 41:37
  Those questions are answered when we take these big journeys, and they inform how we live our everyday lives.
• 41:44
  I can't imagine.
• 41:45
  All right, this is what's crazy to me.
• 41:48
  I can't imagine these guys going up to space, not just space, but uh I mean, to go to the moon.
• 41:56
  Think of how few people ever in the history of humankind got to experience that.
• 42:02
  Think about how rare that is.
• 42:06
  There are 8.3 billion people who currently live on Earth.
• 42:11
  It's an estimated 17 billion who've ever lived on planet Earth.
• 42:17
  And out of all the current billions and billions of people, only 24 have ever gone to the moon.
• 42:27
  Of those 24, 12 of those, one dozen have stepped foot on the man on the moon in the history of mankind.
• 42:38
  12 people have stepped foot on the moon.
• 42:41
  24 have circled the moon, and now we have four more.
• 42:48
  And we have the first woman to ever circle the moon, and the first black man to ever circle the moon.
• 42:56
  This is huge.
• 42:58
  This is such a big story.
• 43:00
  And man, Christina's still right.
• 43:04
  When she says, I want to talk about what unites us.
• 43:10
  What makes us the same?
• 43:12
  Uh, who do we care about?
• 43:14
  What do we care about?
• 43:16
  What's important when you send other humans off the planet?
• 43:20
  Right?
• 43:21
  These are the questions that she's pondering.
• 43:23
  And I can't help but to think of the headlines.
• 43:27
  Like we're missing the whole point.
• 43:31
  We're missing the point when we're talking about oil prices, and you know, that's such a fluid thing.
• 43:37
  We ought to know by now.
• 43:39
  Oil prices are going to go up and they're gonna go down.
• 43:43
  They're currently high because the war is going on.
• 43:47
  When the war wraps up, and it will, this is not going to be a forever war.
• 43:54
  When the war ends, when there's some kind of a uh final resolution, which the signs are kind of pointing that uh that's gonna happen fairly soon.
• 44:06
  And I think the pressure is definitely on our president to get this thing wrapped up.
• 44:12
  Oil prices will start to come down again.
• 44:18
  It's such a fluid thing, but that's like the headline right now.
• 44:24
  People are angry and they're fighting and name calling and pointing fingers at who whose fault it is, and I don't know.
• 44:33
  It's like we're missing the point here.
• 44:38
  Yeah, the launch right on the heels.
• 44:41
  I mean, right on the heels of the Apache pilots who flew in front of Kid Rock's home, and Kid Rock gives a salute to the Apache pilots.
• 44:55
  That was like endless news, and and I did a show on that, like a lighthearted show, and I actually I texted my friend who was an Apache pilot, and I'm like, man, I'll bet you did some cool things like that.
• 45:11
  He was like, he's like, man, that was so cool.
• 45:15
  Uh he's like, I believe basically I plead the fifth over text message.
• 45:22
  So, you know, it's such a lighthearted moment, and the world was so upset about this, and like it's this manufactured outrage.
• 45:34
  That there's nobody, nobody in the United States.
• 45:38
  Chances are pretty good, nobody in the US is gonna meet the Apache pilots who flew in front of Kid Rock's house, and even if they did, what would you say to them?
• 45:52
  Like, how is that gonna affect your life?
• 45:57
  How does that affect what you do and how you treat your family and your faith in God?
• 46:03
  How does it affect that?
• 46:06
  And I talk about this all the time.
• 46:09
  No matter who's president, I mean, Donald Trump lives rent-free in so many people's heads.
• 46:15
  How does that affect your relationship with God?
• 46:21
  I I can tell you how it's affected mine.
• 46:26
  Exactly, zero.
• 46:29
  Donald Trump does not dictate what my relationship with my God is.
• 46:37
  Neither did Joe Biden, neither did Barack Obama, neither did either of the Bushes or Ronald Reagan.
• 46:50
  Not a single president has affected my faith in God whatsoever.
• 46:55
  And yet, people obsess, they obsess about them.
• 47:00
  And I think we're just missing the point.
• 47:02
  I think we're really missing the bigger picture here.
• 47:06
  And it's that we have something that's uniting mankind, and it's the media can't even bother to make that headline news for the nine days that they're in space.
• 47:19
  Like they bury the stories, and it's like uh a yawn and a nod.
• 47:24
  It was barely on the news when the launch actually happened.
• 47:29
  And I check the news constantly.
• 47:31
  Um I'm like constantly looking at the news.
• 47:35
  I didn't see anything about it the day of the launch.
• 47:40
  I I didn't see one single thing on the news.
• 47:45
  I just happened to, I happen to remember April 1st, and I was like, oh yeah, March is done.
• 47:50
  They were talking about launching in in March.
• 47:53
  That obviously never happened.
• 47:55
  Now it's a new month, and they were talking about how they have to launch in April, or they're gonna miss the window.
• 48:01
  Like April is the absolute last month that we're able to launch.
• 48:06
  I think for this year, or at least until the fall or something, till the moon gets back aligned uh where they're able to do it because the moon has to be in a in a certain part of its orbit.
• 48:18
  They only have so many windows.
• 48:21
  So I happened to look it up, and I was like, oh, the launch is happening like in an hour.
• 48:27
  That's how I found out about it.
• 48:30
  So the news, they're just they're missing, they're missing something so bad.
• 48:35
  And I it just it makes me lose sleep sometimes.
• 48:41
  Because they they work so hard to keep people divided.
• 48:46
  That something is historical as this Artemis II launch.
• 48:51
  It gets a yawn and a uh let's move on back to Donald Trump.
• 48:57
  It's like they just there's this gravitational pull to Donald Trump, and I don't, I don't get it.
• 49:06
  It's so unfortunate.
• 49:08
  But anyway, uh, we're not talking about the unfortunate parts.
• 49:12
  We're talking about the celebration of what's happening.
• 49:14
  Finally, number four astronaut, Jeremy Hansen.
• 49:18
  He's the Canadian mission specialist.
• 49:22
  Age 50, he was born in London, Ontario.
• 49:27
  My wife has family in there.
• 49:30
  So right there, two of the four, 50% of the astronauts have connections to my wife.
• 49:37
  I married a celebrity, I think.
• 49:42
  Ontario, uh London, Ontario.
• 49:47
  We have Grand Rapids, Michigan, where my wife's family is from.
• 49:53
  Then we have another astronaut who uh we have mutual friends.
• 50:01
  Uh he's a fellow church of Christ.
• 50:04
  I'm I'm a I'm a minister in the churches of Christ, and uh Victor is a Victor Glover is a member of the church of Christ.
• 50:15
  And uh it's just really cool.
• 50:16
  There are a lot of these connections, and you look at that and you look at like what are the chances of any connections, but I guarantee that probably most, if not all of you have connections in some way to each of these people.
• 50:30
  And I could go on about the six degrees of separation.
• 50:34
  Uh I I get really excited about that whole theory because I believe it's more like one or two degrees of separation.
• 50:42
  If you're not familiar with the six degrees of separation, look it up.
• 50:46
  Uh I I believe that we are connected to anybody in the world.
• 50:50
  We can get connected to anybody in the world.
• 50:52
  I could get a phone number, or somebody who could get direct contact with anybody in the world within six degrees of separation pretty quickly.
• 51:09
  And I've found that to be true.
• 51:11
  I've been on uh I've been on flights before where I've had somebody holler out from the back of the plane, they're like, Jimmy.
• 51:18
  I turn around, I'm like, hey, nice to be flying with you.
• 51:21
  That's happened to me multiple times.
• 51:24
  Uh I've been in airports, some of the busiest airports in the United States and have bumped into people.
• 51:29
  I've been in other countries and have bumped into people I know.
• 51:33
  Uh, literally just walking on the streets, and I see somebody, and I'm like, hey, what are you doing in you know in Haiti?
• 51:40
  Um it's really cool.
• 51:43
  It's a very, very small world, and we're all a lot more connected than what you realize.
• 51:51
  And that's what these astronauts get.
• 51:54
  They understand it.
• 51:56
  They totally get it.
• 51:58
  So Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian, he's a rock climber and a mountain biker.
• 52:04
  He enjoys sailing.
• 52:06
  Uh, married, the father of three.
• 52:09
  At age 12, he began what turned into a lifelong career in aviation, joining the Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron and earning his glider pilot wings at 16 and a private pilot's license a year later.
• 52:26
  And all these guys that like it starts, most of these guys anyway, it starts with a fascination with aviation.
• 52:33
  That's why I talk about that often on this show.
• 52:37
  Let your kids' curiosity let it go.
• 52:44
  Embrace it.
• 52:47
  My all three of my kids love aviation, but my youngest, he is really, really like he wants to dedicate his life to aviation.
• 52:54
  And now he's talking about space travel with this launch.
• 52:58
  Like he's super excited about space travel, and he's like, I will find a way.
• 53:03
  He's 10.
• 53:04
  He's almost 11.
• 53:08
  Let curiosity roll with your kids.
• 53:12
  Curiosity is a good thing.
• 53:14
  Uh embrace it.
• 53:17
  So he earned his bachelor's degree with honors in space science.
• 53:23
  And served as a uh CF-18 fighter pilot and combat operations officer, uh, working with NORAD and Arctic Flying Operations.
• 53:35
  The Canadian Space Agency selected him for astronaut training in 2009.
• 53:40
  And that's one of the cool things.
• 53:41
  It's got to be such a cool thing where it's like they pick you.
• 53:47
  All of these people were hand-selected for space programs.
• 53:53
  And they excelled.
• 53:56
  Yeah, they they worked hard, they excelled.
• 54:00
  And it's such an opportunity.
• 54:02
  Again, where in the world do you get this kind of opportunity?
• 54:07
  It's what I love about America.
• 54:08
  It's what I love about where we live, is that the opportunities are literally endless.
• 54:16
  And the unity is a lot stronger than what we think.
• 54:21
  And that's what this mission to me is all about.
• 54:24
  It's about uh faith, it's the intersection of faith and science.
• 54:29
  And it's the deep questions about humanity and revelations about humanity that we really, really, really ought to grasp.
• 54:40
  It's this idea that we're we're all so much more connected than we realize.
• 54:48
  We're all connected.
• 54:50
  Every living, breathing human is connected in a lot more ways than what you realize.
• 54:59
  And as they go dark on the back side of the moon, that's that's what Victor was saying.
• 55:04
  I just I hope we really realize that humanity realizes that uh you know we're all together and that they think about us and pray for us.
• 55:18
  And uh it's just it's it's so so cool.
• 55:21
  And I can't wait to hear what their stories are and what their experience was on that mission.
• 55:31
  So we ought to be praying for their safe return.
• 55:36
  Pray that we get to hear their stories, and that they get to retell from their perspective what it was like circling the moon and looking back at Earth and realizing like we are just this tiny, tiny dot in a vast world that God created.
• 55:58
  I mean, we are a speck.
• 56:02
  And yet each and every person is uniquely special and important.
• 56:10
  And that, my friends is the hidden lightness.
• 56:13
  You can find more out about my show and get all the latest podcasts if you go to the menu navigation board at America Outloud.news under our shows or schedule.
• 56:21
  You'll be in the know.
• 56:22
  There is a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us.
• 56:26
  When there's so much darkness that develops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people.
• 56:34
  Join me in being a light.