“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit .”      -- Historian Will Durant, simplifying part of Aristotle’s philosophy. As I write these words, the crew of Artemis II has returned safely and successfully to Earth, after being the first humans to have reached the vicinity of the Moon in over 50 years. It is also the 56th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13, a mission known not only for the catastrophic events on the way to the Moon, but even more so for the Herculean efforts made to eventually return the astronauts successfully back home.    Artemis II landing, April 11th 2026 (NASA) NASA’s foray to the Moon in the 60s and early 70s is the story of a long journey made step-by-step. The simple one-man Mercury spacecraft paved the way to the two-man Gemini craft which was a stepping stone to the twin Apollo space capsule and Moon lander. Between May of 1961 and April of 1970, NASA launched twenty five manned missions, a ca...

During the anniversary week of Apollo 13, I find myself thinking less about the explosion of the oxygen tank in the spacecraft and more about what still worked - before and after. Few moments in history illustrate the value of reliable systems more clearly than that flight. Watching the Artemis II mission last week, I was struck by some parallels - and differences - between it and Apollo 13. Artemis II’s Integrity landed back on Earth on the 11th of April, the same day Apollo 13’s Odyssey was launched. Externally, the two capsules appear similar, albeit Integrity is larger and carries a crew of four instead of three. Internally, however, over half a century of technological progress separates them. Nowhere is this more evident than in the computing power available to the astronauts. While computers are ubiquitous today, in the 1960s, they were in their infancy and the Moon landings were not only a triumph of human effort, ingenuity, and dedication, but also a triumph of one of huma...

Setting the stage Between 1968 and 1972 NASA sent nine Apollo missions to the Moon. Reaching the Moon was an effort that required a decade of work by 400,000 people, billions of dollars and an incalculable amount of moving parts. Of the nine missions to the Moon, eight were spectacular successes and one was a spectacular near-disaster. Apollo 13 launched on April 11th, 1970 and was meant to be the first of the Apollo missions to be dedicated to exploring the Moon, after Apollo 11 made the first landing and 12 had improved on it by making a pinpoint landing. On April 13th, a little over 2 days after launch, one of the two large oxygen tanks in the Service Module component of the spacecraft exploded, crippling the spacecraft on the way to the Moon. Over the next days, NASA’s engineers worked feverishly together with the astronauts to overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems and brought them back to Earth - safe and sound.      ...