'Nothing prepares you for the feeling of floating:' Astronaut recalls experience as Artemis II launches and Elon Musk readies for city on the moon

**Christy Strawser** (0:01)
Welcome to On Deadline, your radio news from Odyssey newsrooms across the country. I'm Christy Strawser, Odyssey's managing editor of news. For the first time since 1972, NASA is sending astronauts to the moon. Depending on when you're listening to this, a giant rocket will lift off or lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a crew of four astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian, embarking on a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth. So is this the beginning of a new space race? Here's KYW.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
NASA's first mission around the moon in more than 50 years. KYW's Vic Rackapothi spoke to an astronomy expert about what the Artemis II mission means for America's space program.

**Vic Rackapothi** (0:41)
It's been 53 years since the last Apollo mission. Back then, the US used moon shots as a symbol of Cold War superiority. But chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, Derek Pitts, says after NASA reached its goal of beating the Soviets, it focused on non-lunar advancements.

**Derek Pitts** (0:54)
We expanded into developing space shuttle and developing space station. Fantastic space probes have taken us all the way out beyond Pluto. So we've learned a tremendous amount about the solar system.

**Vic Rackapothi** (1:05)
So then why go back to the moon? Half a century since Apollo isn't lunar exploration old hat.

**Derek Pitts** (1:10)
We didn't explore the poles at all. We didn't explore the backside of the moon. We didn't dig very deeply into the moon.

**Vic Rackapothi** (1:17)
After all, no single Apollo astronaut spent more than 75 hours on the lunar surface. But this is getting ahead of the point of Artemis II. Over about 10 days, the four astronauts planned to orbit Earth, use lunar gravity to travel around the moon and stray further from Earth than any humans ever have, and then return for a splashdown. Pitt says it's meant to prove further lunar exploration is feasible.

**Derek Pitts** (1:34)
This is really a test of all of the systems for the rocket and the systems for the Orion crew capsule.

**Christy Strawser** (1:41)
With the government sending people to the moon, it begs questions about what America's richest and most space-oriented man is up to. One expert said the Artemis mission sets the stage for Elon Musk's SpaceX missions to follow. Here's KCBS with more on Musk's plans for the future.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:56)
Elon Musk says SpaceX is shifting focus from Mars to the moon. Yes, Earth's moon. He envisions a, quote, self-growing city with solar panels sending power back to data centers orbiting Earth. To tell us more, we're joined by Christopher Aubin, professor of physics at Fordham University. So how might SpaceX actually approach this proposed self-growing city by Elon Musk? What kind of conditions do they need to account for?

**Christopher Aubin** (2:25)
Well, probably the main thing to remember is the moon is, well, it's in space, obviously, and space, not to be overly dramatic, but space is always trying to kill us. It's not exactly meant to be hospitable for humans. And so, and since the moon does not have an atmosphere like we do, we would have to basically bring everything needed to survive. So, that would mean creating self-enclosed shelters that are going to protect us, provide oxygen, protect us from radiation.
And basically, pretty much every essential we would need, we would have to transport there, such as water and things like that. So, it would be quite an endeavor to even just get a small shelter up there at this point. In terms of creating a self-sustaining colony, that's probably not in the near, near future. But the idea of creating a base of operations to get things started might not be too unfeasible.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:29)
Now, critics say this would be a far cheaper and easier task on Earth, right? You could just cut out transporting all those materials you said are required for life and just set it up on this planet. Earth has an atmosphere. Earth has the ability to harness power from the sun. What is the incentive to just do it on the moon or is this just something that he wants to do to do it?

**Christopher Aubin** (3:51)
I think part of it is just knowing him and knowing, you know, just sort of the idea of that is the idea of doing it just to do it is kind of interesting and exciting. There are, you know, there are definitely reasons to consider the moon as a, you know, starting point for space exploration. You know, one argument that always comes out is that, you know, if you could actually build rockets on the moon, then any transports you take from the moon are a lot cheaper and easier, requires less fuel to take off from the moon because it has one sixth the gravity of Earth. But yeah, that is one minor simplification compared to all of these other, all of these other complications that would arise. So it's kind of a nice proof of principle idea to see if we could do it. But in terms of long-standing practical feasibility, it's not really a great idea.