By Esteban Fernandez
For Times West Virginian
Fairmont — The country fought an unpopular war overseas while protests and civil unrest took place on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, a lone vessel from Earth cut itself off from human contact on the far side of the moon for 40 minutes. The year wasn’t 2026, but 1968. And like Apollo 8 in 1968, Artemis II snapped a photo of Earth suspended over the lunar surface where none of the planet’s many conflicts could be seen.
“I think space gives us a bigger perspective,” Rob Hayhurst, Fairmont resident turned NASA Contractor KBR in Texas. “Not only on Earth but to realize it goes on forever. If we get out of our own heads and our own fears and own reasons to take up arms against other people, because we’re fearful, and think about the bigger picture, we might have less of a reason to take up arms against other adversaries, or perceived adversaries.”
Artemis II returned Americans to lunar space for the first time in 54 years Monday evening. Orion, the mission spacecraft, carried astronauts further than any other human being in the history of the species, including the 1968 Apollo 8 mission that reached lunar orbit for the first time. Artemis spent seven hours doing lunar observation, where the crew saw the near and far sides of the moon.
Once the craft completed its trip around the far side of the moon, the crew began their trip home on a free return trajectory, which means Orion was on a path set by gravity which automatically returned the craft home. Only a few correction burns were needed to set Orion on the right path.
Watching the Artemis crew return to the moon stirred memories of Fairmont the year humans landed on the moon for Becki Robinette. Robinette was 14. Space still calls to her.
“I think space is so beautiful,” she said. “I don’t think you can paint a prettier picture than in space. My bedroom, mind you, I’m 71. You would think my bedroom belongs to a 10-year-old boy.”
Robinette grew up extremely poor, picked on in school from first to eighth grade. She said growing up in West Virginia in the 60s without money on the side of the town where money lived was very ostracizing. The first American manned space flight, aboard a Mercury-Redstone vehicle, provided an escape for Robinette in 1961.
“It kept me sane in the 60s,” she said. “It was a bad home life. It was a bad life at school. My life sucked and the only time I could get to where it didn’t suck is if I would get into space. It made me feel safe.”
Robinette didn’t have the money to go to college and become an astronaut. She set her sights lower, hoping she could work for NASA as a secretary, just so she could be close to the space program. The closest she got was talking her husband into taking her to Merritt Island, Florida for their honeymoon after she got pregnant at the age of 16. Merritt Island was a roughly 30 minute drive from the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Fifty-four years after the last manned moon flight, Robinette now lives in Jacksonville. She’s been following the Artemis mission since its launch. Last week, when the SLS rocket launched from Cape Canaveral with Artemis II aboard, Robinette attended her dance class wearing her ‘Moon 1969,’ T-shirt. Robinette was more than happy to notify her classmates about the significance of the mission.
Mike DeVault, former member of the W.Va. House of Delegates, remembers all of Fairmont being glued to their TVs the year Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
“It was Buck Rogers in the 21st Century stuff,” he said. “Here we are, orbiting another planet, basically.”
DeVault was 11 at the time. His school teachers taught lessons about the moon, he recalled, and he even remembers the hype of seeing real moon rocks. What the students got to see were little pieces of lunar rock no bigger than a fingernail.
Hayhurst, who works for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, has a career spanning over three decades. He’s worked on everything from the Space Shuttle Program, the International Space Station and the Commercial Crew Program. He’s not working on Artemis, but he’s definitely a fan, he said.
“The thing that got me going was, I think in like 1980 or 81, Carl Sagan had a series called ‘Cosmos’ that just enthralled me,” Hayhurst said. “I could not get enough of it, so that was really the turnkey point that got me interested in space.”
Today, Hayhurst said Artemis is a tremendous accomplishment. It’s sad the country hasn’t been to the moon in 54 years, but it’s also inspiring, he said. He hopes NASA will find a way to continue journeying to the moon. NASA plans to use Artemis III to demonstrate hardware in 2027. Artemis IV will land on the moon if all goes well with the previous Artemis missions.
DeVault disagreed there were parallels between Apollo 8 and Artemis II when it came to the state of the world during their flights. He said it’s more coincidence that Artemis II happens to be taking place during a turbulent time.
But Hayhurst agreed there was some parallel. Humans seem to have an inability to get along on the surface. The species can do great things, but so much of human existence is fearful and figuring out how to destroy one’s enemies. In a lot of ways, humans haven’t changed much since 1968, but it’s only a snapshot of 54 years.
“If humanity could look at the bigger picture of things, and space kind of gives us a glimpse of that,” Hayhurst said. “It probably would be a better world.”
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