#but when

now that artemis ii has made a safe return to our pale blue dot in the universe, i feel like i can share this video and not harsh too much on the (very understandable, and shared!) moon joy that has been lighting up the world since april 1. and to be clear, i don't share this documentary with the intent of ruining or dispelling any of that joy; i was watching the artemis ii livestream right alongside so many of you, and i teared up just like the astronauts did when they proposed naming that bright crater on the far side of the moon carroll. but i do think that this specific documentary is one of the best, if not *the* best, thoroughly nuanced breakdowns of NASA's most historic failure, and all of the ways that failure absolutely could have, and SHOULD have, been avoided.

as we as a species enter a new phase of human spaceflight, i think it is more important than ever for us to really reckon with these ghosts of the past, so they don't become prescient augurs for our future. to quote one of the commenters in this video's comments section, "I knew about the engineers getting overruled the night before [challenger's launch]. I did not know that the o-ring problem was discovered on the very first test firings of the SRBs."