Space Adventures, the need to Focus
and my Easter message
Wishing all readers a Happy Easter. While Easter Sunday is a joyous day, the period of Lent leading up to Good Friday is a time for reflection.
There is plenty to reflect on at this time we find ourselves in history. Sometimes I think the world has gone mad. Following goings on in America, through the view of legacy media, we fear the world will end any day. First it was democracy ending, then the budget cuts, then Musk, now tariffs destroying the economy.
The Economist occasionally does some good work, but the editors have lost their minds since Trump was elected. A sample from a mailing list email sent by the Economist.
Headlines: damage, the brink, battling, picture of orange and angry Trump. This is supposed to be high-end journalism. I came across an article headline (The Times behind paywall) implying Trump was cutting down historic trees at the White House.
A free article about it found here. The tree was planted by President Andrew Jackson two centuries ago. What sort of person chops down such a tree? It turns out if you read the article that the tree was in terrible condition and was only held up by metal posts and was in danger of falling. The headline says Trump plants, inverted commas, “MAGAnolia”. I didn’t pick up the extra “a” at first. The original tree is a magnolia tree. My goodness.
Space
But the topic for this article is Space. The media will report that well. Right?
Astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were originally planned to be at the space station for a week, ended up stuck there for nine months. When the mission to return them was imminent I was trying to find news about it. It was hard to find anything in the lead up in the legacy media. I suppose the story served the legacy media no purpose. The video of the return flight on 18 March 2025 is found on the SpaceX website here. The video linked is a full 2hr coverage of the mission. Splashdown is at 1hr 15:25 in the video, followed by the recovery.
At around 1 hr 37min there is a pod of dolphins swimming around the capsule as support staff ready the capsule for craning onto the recovery vessel.
You can’t help having a sense of awe at our world, thinking about the technological effort of the people that made this happen together with the beauty of the natural world.
The back story to the return of the astronauts is that there was some problem with the Boeing spaceship originally planned to return the two astronauts stranded and take up replacements. Musk’s company SpaceX was decided as the best option to do the changeover. There were suggestions that this rescue could have happened earlier except that the previous US government didn’t want the rescue to occur before the election for fear that it would be good publicity for Musk who had declared support for Trump. Who knows?
One of the astronauts returning is a Russian, Aleksandr Gorbunov.
But I thought we were at war with them…
A Rescue in Space
A rescue from a space station is that someone of my age, a young boy at the time of the moon landings, has a fascination with. A real space rescue. When young all we could envision was something like this.
For those old enough to remember this epic episode of a rescue.
"Sun Probe" is the eleventh episode of Thunderbirds season 1, first broadcast on 9th December 1965. Who could forget this line from the episode:
"Oh no! Virgil! We brought the wrong box!"
— Brains
Supermarionation! Better acting than some we see today.
A Promotion for Girls to take up STEM Subjects
It wasn’t long before we got to witness another Space expedition. This was an all-woman glamour crew going up into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket. Blue Origin’s purpose it appears is space tourism.
This mission was to empower young women and encourage them to take up maths and science.
There are a lot of fillers in this photograph. Cruel people on the internet have suggested that one purpose the joyride mission was to test if they would explode.
Young women also learn from this adventure that you can wear designer space suits. No need to wear the ugly suits the space station crew has to wear.
Conspiracy theories have abounded after the mission. Was it fake? A clue was when the capsule landed, looking brand new, the flimsy door started opening inwards when they are supposed to open it from the outside. Then one of the support staff quickly runs to the door.
You can imagine the support person saying “Shut the door stupid so Bezos can open it with his big wrench”. A few minutes later Bezos pretends to open the door with his wrench. Youtubes of the door opening here and here.
If you want commentary on this mission from a few female commentators you’ll get a laugh from Megyn Kelly’s brutal take
She is a big fan of Bezos fiancé, and Natalie on Redacted, who is “super inspired by these ladies”.
And some good comments for a laugh on this X post.
Astronaut Jonny Kim
Jonny Kim, son of Korean immigrants, is an astronaut who has just gone up to the space station last week, but on a Russian Soyuz rocket with two cosmonauts. Hey, didn’t I say before we were supposed to be at war with them? This article (well written) on my Apple News Feed from the Wall Street Journal caught my attention.
This fellow is a dead set legend.
He was a Navy SEAL, served in Iraq, Silver and Bronze stars for his work as a medic, then Harvard medical school, now astronaut. Not to mention father of three. By the way had to learn Russian quickly so he could go up with the Russians.
Apparently, he is the Asian American kids’ nightmare for making them seem like underachievers. The author of the article, Stu Woo, presumably Asian American background, says he is glad his mother doesn’t know Jonny Kim’s mother.
From the article, Jonny “never set out to achieve this trifecta of lifetime achievements. His power, he said, is focus.”
Ah so that’s it: focus, that’s what we need. It’s a bit late for me in my career, but I will pass this advice on to my children. There have been glimpses of my 2 year old grandchildren showing focus, but mostly chaos. We’ll have to work on that. They will be glad to learn this from me.
Jonny says:
“That’s important to me even to this day, that you should have one singular goal, because you should be all in on what you’re doing, not have some social-climbing, some professional ladder”.
Again, if you want a laugh, you may have come across Stephen He on youtube. His videos on Asian parenting are hilarious.
But seriously Jonny Kim is an inspiration. As are the other Space Station astronauts like Suni and Butch.
This Easter
I have pondered over the Easter story, listening to homilies the last few weeks.
No matter what faith you are the Easter story covers so many aspects of humanity. So many failings of humanity. The politician Pilate who has a sense that Jesus has done nothing wrong worthy of death, doesn’t listen to his wife, and caves in to what is politically expedient. Herod who delights in mocking Jesus. The crowd, some of whom presumably had been listening to teachings of Jesus, who just go along with each other calling for his death. We’ve certainly seen all these traits over the last years. But there is also hope in the story, Simon who is called up on the spot to assist. The criminal crucified besides Jesus who knows he has done wrong. And then Jesus making the ultimate sacrifice with no hatred in his heart.
This one-minute clip with Butch Wilmore’s Christian message from the Space Station is worth watching. There are also longer talks by him you can find on youtube.
While the world seems a crazy place at the present time there is much to be hopeful and grateful for.
I wish readers a Happy Easter.
God Bless.
Happy Easter Andrew ❤️ Thank you for all you do.