text: November 21, 2022 I’ve got a theory I don’t like. What if there’s a very real chance that the powered flyby we’re doing today could have something go wrong with it. Alarms sounding, the ship burning too slow and falling ever closer to the lunar surface, or burning too hard or too long and flinging Orion, and just as importantly me, on a course out towards deep space. What if NASA did yesterday’s training just on the off chance they needed to get me a little used to alarms going off, and following Mark’s instructions? That’s a big part of my thinking as I make my final preparations before the burn. The moon’s getting really big, really quickly, enough so that there’s actually the impression of “falling” towards it - which is super cool. The most dramatic part or the burn ends up being the view. I’m only 80 nautical miles away at the closest and it’s literally right there. After seeing the moon as a thumb sized ball your whole life when you’re this close it really looks like you could just jump down. I’m going to lose radio contact with NASA as I pass into the lunar shadow and can hear the smile in Mark’s voice when he wishes me a safe 2 hours 36 minutes of radio silence. He had a joke in mind but decided not to say it. It’s a long time to just sit and feel like you’re alone. I’d never really thought of space as “lonely” but there it is. Basically, since day 2 of this mission I’ve been further away from any other human being than anyone has ever been. On the far side of the moon, radio to Earth blocked, it is like being lost at sea. The view keeps me occupied for about a half hour. I take a look for Webb, not that I expect to see it. The James Webb space telescope is, on any pen and paper diagram of the earth and moon, just a few inches further off beyond the moon from earth. In practice that’s more thousands of miles than I can see. But still, it’s “right there”. I eat a Skor bar, using my precious - only get one set in my adult life - teeth to grind caramel and sugar into small enough chunks for me to swallow. And then I read a book. It only half helps. Starship Troopers is an interesting read though - especially when contrasted with the movie. Should people have to demonstrate a willingness to put the collective good ahead of their individual benefits in order to vote? Or are we all on this ship of state together and so it’s important for everyone to get a say in its operations? 2 hours 35 minutes later and the master alarm hasn’t gone off, and I’ve got radio back. NASA’s crunching the numbers to see how it went, but they seem happy with heir first set of readings. “We’ve got a good insertion Alex!” Mark’s got a gentle drawl, like his tongue is in no real hurry to get the words out. “You watching the video upload from radio shadow? The moon looks amazing. I half expected to spot Webb.” I leave out the intentional self-distraction. I can hear the engineers buzzing in the background of the radio. It sounds like each and every single one of them just got a promotion, a bonus, and a text from a crush telling them that they loved them. “Hell Alex, between you and me, right this second, I’m jealous as hell of you,” Mark said. Ouch, that hurt. I honestly thought I deserved this. It was all I’d ever wanted since I was a little damn kid. I’d spent my summers at high school at science camps and dreaming about space, I’d gotten a damn degree in aerospace engineering with damn honors, I’d given NASA three years of my life working for them instead of founding a tech start-up (btw. It would have been called Clarity. An online science repository where studies are organized and cross posted and tracked by topic. Say coffee. You open the entry, and the first thing is the most compelling meta analysis of coffee’s overall health effects, then sub articles about its most significant individual effects. Someone writes a new study about coffee increasing the risk of colorectal disease? It has to “beat” the other studies already up about that in order to get posted. The idea is, you want the state of the art on coffee and you’ve got the top articles right there, and you can zoom in with greater and greater detail revealing more, and more, niche studies, but all of them the leading ones. Science “news” can happen when something in that top line changes.) Anyways... I hadn’t done that. Instead, I’d tried for this. And I got a form letter saying that unfortunately, due to the “keen interest in the astronaut program, many well-qualified applicants such as myself,” didn’t get in. But Moonikin did? An empty seat on the one trip I ever wanted to take. I did, honestly, think I deserved it. Now all I can think about is how Mark must feel exactly the same way, except he got even closer. Yet here I am, and there he is. I cheated and got what he wanted. Everyone at NASA must feel like that. I’m such an asshole. I give things a few hours back at NASA to calm down. They’d be having champagne and enjoying the win. Mission control might not even be too crowded. “Mark?” “Yeah, how’s it go’in up there buddy?” He didn’t sound like he’d been drinking. Probably on shift. I couldn’t hear much in the background anymore. “Can you do me a favor? I’m going to need a lawyer for when I get back. Think you could find me someone?” There’s a long pause at that. “NASA wants to keep you being up there kind of close to the chest for the time being. This is kind of their moment in the sun, and they’d rather not have clouds right now.” “Yeah... No problem.” If NASA were asking for a favor, I definitely owed them a few billion. “Hey, look on the bright side. So far the mission’s been going off without a hitch. You’re due a mission glitch, and maybe it saves you the worry of a trial.” The funny thing about the radio, if you say something, then cringe at having said it, the person on the other line will have a hard time knowing. I very much heard Mark cringe. He must have had a couple of glasses of champagne after all. But hey, I don’t believe in bad luck or jinxes. You hear that God? I dare you to do something to me! Smite me! See? Still alive and unsmitten. Smitted. Whatever, I’m an engineer not a linguist. Still... I’d kind of deserve it. \*\*\* I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen). *Artemis I Has A Stowaway* is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. © 2022 Nathan H.