El Viaje Más Largo: Artemis II y el Sueño de Volver a la Luna

Four hundred thousand kilometers.

I want listeners to try to sit with that number for a second.

The International Space Station orbits at roughly four hundred kilometers.

Artemis II went a thousand times farther than that.

Es que la distancia es difícil de imaginar.

The distance is hard to imagine.

Pero lo importante es esto: hay cuatro personas en esa nave.

But the important thing is this: there are four people on that spacecraft.

No es un robot, no es un satélite.

It's not a robot, it's not a satellite.

Son seres humanos, muy lejos de todo.

They are human beings, very far from everything.

And that detail matters more than it might seem, because sending robots to space is genuinely extraordinary, but it's not the same thing.

There's something about putting a human body into that environment, that void, that changes the nature of what you're doing.

Bueno, mira, el cuerpo humano en el espacio es un problema enorme.

Well, look, the human body in space is a huge problem.

La radiación, la falta de gravedad, el aislamiento psicológico.

Radiation, the lack of gravity, psychological isolation.

Los astronautas del Artemis II estuvieron en una situación muy peligrosa.

The Artemis II astronauts were in a very dangerous situation.

The radiation beyond the Van Allen belts is something that people don't talk about enough.

When you're that far from Earth, you lose the protection of the planet's magnetic field, and the cosmic rays just come straight through.

It's one of the reasons the Apollo astronauts all had elevated risks of cardiovascular disease later in life.

Es que la NASA estudia esos efectos con mucho cuidado.

The fact is NASA studies those effects very carefully.

Esta misión es muy importante para aprender cómo el cuerpo humano responde cuando está tan lejos.

This mission is very important for learning how the human body responds when it's this far away.

Los datos que recogieron van a ser muy útiles para misiones futuras.

The data they collected will be very useful for future missions.

Look, the crew for this mission is worth talking about for a moment.

You have Reid Wiseman as commander, Victor Glover as pilot, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

And it's the first deep-space mission with a diverse crew, which is not trivial symbolically.

Sí, Victor Glover fue el primer astronauta afroamericano en un vuelo lunar.

Yes, Victor Glover was the first African American astronaut on a lunar flight.

Y Christina Koch fue la primera mujer en este tipo de misión.

And Christina Koch was the first woman on this type of mission.

Eso es muy diferente de las misiones del Apolo, donde todos los astronautas eran hombres blancos.

That's very different from the Apollo missions, where all the astronauts were white men.

I covered a NASA press event once, back in the nineties, and there was this old engineer who had worked on the Saturn V, and he said something that stuck with me.

He said, the Moon landing was the greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century, but we didn't know what to do with it afterward.

That's haunted me ever since.

La verdad es que ese ingeniero tenía razón.

The truth is that engineer was right.

Y ahora, con el Artemis, la pregunta es diferente.

And now, with Artemis, the question is different.

Antes la pregunta era: ¿podemos llegar?

Before, the question was: can we get there?

Ahora la pregunta es: ¿podemos quedarnos?

Now the question is: can we stay?

That shift is enormous.

The Artemis program is not designed to plant a flag and come home.

The plan, eventually, is a lunar gateway, a small space station in orbit around the Moon, and a sustained human presence on the surface.

That is a completely different ambition from Apollo.

Mira, y hay otra razón muy importante para volver a la Luna.

Look, and there's another very important reason to go back to the Moon.

En la Luna hay un material que se llama helio-3, y los científicos creen que este material puede ser muy útil para la energía del futuro.

On the Moon there is a material called helium-3, and scientists believe this material could be very useful for energy in the future.

Right, helium-3 is the fuel that fusion reactors would theoretically use.

And Earth has almost none of it, but the Moon's surface has been collecting it from solar winds for billions of years.

If fusion energy ever becomes viable, the Moon becomes the most strategically important piece of real estate in the solar system.

Y también hay agua en la Luna, en los polos, en forma de hielo.

And there is also water on the Moon, at the poles, in the form of ice.

El agua es fundamental porque los astronautas la necesitan para vivir, pero también se puede separar en hidrógeno y oxígeno, y eso sirve como combustible para cohetes.

Water is fundamental because astronauts need it to live, but it can also be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which can serve as rocket fuel.

So the Moon becomes a refueling station.

Which means that anything you're trying to do further out in the solar system, Mars, the asteroid belt, suddenly becomes dramatically cheaper if you can manufacture your fuel there instead of hauling it all the way from Earth.

A ver, hay un contexto que es muy importante aquí.

Well, there's a context that's very important here.

China también tiene un programa lunar muy serio.

China also has a very serious lunar program.

China planea enviar astronautas a la Luna antes de 2030.

China plans to send astronauts to the Moon before 2030.

Eso cambió todo para la NASA.

That changed everything for NASA.

The extraordinary thing is that we've come full circle.

In the sixties it was American versus Soviet.

Now it's American versus Chinese.

Competition with a rival superpower is apparently what it takes to get humans off this planet and back to the Moon.

Sí, pero hay una diferencia importante.

Yes, but there's an important difference.

En los años sesenta, solo los gobiernos podían hacer esto.

In the sixties, only governments could do this.

Ahora hay empresas privadas que también participan.

Now there are private companies that also participate.

SpaceX, de Elon Musk, construyó el cohete que usó el Artemis II para ir tan lejos.

SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, built the rocket that Artemis II used to go so far.

Well, to be precise, Artemis II launched on the Space Launch System, which is NASA's own rocket, built by Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

But SpaceX's Starship is the planned lunar lander for Artemis III, which is the mission that will actually put boots on the Moon again.

So yes, it's a complicated partnership.

Bueno, el SLS, el cohete de la NASA, fue muy caro y tuvo muchos problemas.

Well, the SLS, NASA's rocket, was very expensive and had many problems.

Costó más de cuatro mil millones de dólares por lanzamiento.

It cost more than four billion dollars per launch.

Muchos científicos pensaron que era demasiado caro.

Many scientists thought it was too expensive.

Four billion dollars per launch is, and I don't say this lightly, a staggering number.

SpaceX launches its Falcon Heavy for around a hundred million.

The gap is enormous, and it explains why there's a whole political debate inside the space world about whether the SLS is actually the right tool for this job.

Es que el SLS es muy importante políticamente porque crea empleos en muchos estados de los Estados Unidos.

The SLS is very politically important because it creates jobs in many US states.

Muchos políticos defienden el SLS porque sus empresas locales participan en la construcción.

Many politicians defend the SLS because their local companies participate in its construction.

No es solo ciencia, es política.

It's not just science, it's politics.

There's a long and slightly inglorious tradition of that in American aerospace.

The Space Shuttle survived for thirty years partly because it kept congressional districts employed.

It's one of the structural realities of big government programs, and it's one reason why private companies have started to disrupt the whole industry.

Pero lo que pasó esta semana con el Artemis II es real, independientemente de la política.

But what happened this week with Artemis II is real, regardless of the politics.

Cuatro personas llegaron más lejos de la Tierra que cualquier persona en la historia.

Four people went farther from Earth than any person in history.

Y volvieron.

And they came back.

And they came back.

Which is worth saying plainly, because it's easy to forget how much can go wrong.

Apollo 13 nearly didn't come back.

The Columbia and Challenger disasters.

This is genuinely dangerous work, and the people who do it know that going in.

La verdad es que el objetivo final del programa Artemis no es la Luna.

The truth is that the ultimate goal of the Artemis program is not the Moon.

La Luna es importante, pero es un paso.

The Moon is important, but it's a step.

El objetivo real, para muchos científicos, es Marte.

The real goal, for many scientists, is Mars.

Y para llegar a Marte, primero necesitamos aprender a vivir en la Luna.

And to get to Mars, we first need to learn how to live on the Moon.

Here's what gets me about that framing, though.

Mars is eight months away by spacecraft, minimum.

With current technology, you'd be exposed to radiation for eight months going, eighteen months on the surface waiting for the orbital window, eight months back.

The human cost of that is not small.

We genuinely don't know if a body can survive it intact.

Sí, y por eso la misión del Artemis II fue tan importante para la ciencia.

Yes, and that's why the Artemis II mission was so important for science.

Estudiaron los efectos de la radiación y la falta de gravedad en el cuerpo humano.

They studied the effects of radiation and lack of gravity on the human body.

Cada misión como esta nos da información para el futuro.

Every mission like this gives us information for the future.

I mean, there's a philosophical dimension here too, and I don't want to rush past it.

Every civilization that has ever existed has looked at the sky and wondered.

The Greeks, the Maya, the ancient Chinese astronomers.

We are the first generation with the actual physical capacity to go there.

And for fifty-six years, we mostly chose not to.

Mira, yo creo que hay algo muy importante en esto.

Look, I think there's something very important in this.

Cuando los seres humanos hacen algo así, algo tan difícil y tan peligroso, cambia cómo pensamos sobre nosotros mismos.

When human beings do something like this, something so difficult and so dangerous, it changes how we think about ourselves.

El Apolo 11 cambió el mundo.

Apollo 11 changed the world.

Quizás el Artemis puede hacer algo parecido.

Maybe Artemis can do something similar.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

The photograph of Earth from space, the famous Earthrise taken by Apollo 8 in 1968, that single image is credited by environmental historians with accelerating the entire environmental movement.

The perspective of seeing this planet whole and alone changed something in people.

Maybe going back does the same.

Bueno, el mundo en este momento tiene muchos problemas.

Well, the world right now has many problems.

Una guerra en el Medio Oriente, problemas económicos, cambio climático.

A war in the Middle East, economic problems, climate change.

Y en ese contexto, cuatro personas viajaron más lejos de la Tierra que cualquier ser humano en la historia.

And in that context, four people traveled farther from Earth than any human being in history.

Para mí, eso es importante.

For me, that's important.

Eso dice algo bueno sobre nosotros.

That says something good about us.

It does.

And I think that's actually the right note to end on.

In a week that has been genuinely brutal to follow in the news, four human beings looked back at this planet from farther away than anyone ever has, and they came home.

That's the story.

Thanks for listening to Twilingua, and we'll see you next time.

Hasta la próxima.

Until next time.

Y si quieren aprender más sobre el espacio en español, escuchen otro episodio de Twilingua.

And if you want to learn more about space in Spanish, listen to another episode of Twilingua.

El universo es muy grande, pero el español también.

The universe is very big, but so is Spanish.