B1 · Intermediate
12 min
sciencehistorygeopoliticstechnology
Regreso a la Luna: Artemis II y el futuro del espacio
Return to the Moon: Artemis II and the Future of Space
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So.
NASA started the countdown for Artemis II this week.
Launch scheduled for April 1st, and I keep having to remind myself that is not a joke.
Bueno, mira, es una fecha curiosa.
Well, look, it's a curious date.
Pero la misión es real.
But the mission is real.
Es la primera vez que hay astronautas en una nave cerca de la Luna desde 1972.
It's the first time there are astronauts in a spacecraft near the Moon since 1972.
Más de cincuenta años.
More than fifty years.
More than fifty years.
I was six years old when Apollo 17 came home.
Gene Cernan was the last man to walk on the Moon, and he died in 2017 never seeing anyone go back.
Es que eso es muy triste, la verdad.
That's actually very sad, honestly.
Cernan caminó en la Luna y después...
Cernan walked on the Moon and then, nothing.
nada.
No human being went back.
Ningún ser humano volvió.
For many people, this seemed impossible.
Para muchas personas, esto parecía imposible.
Right, and here's something I want to make clear for listeners, because I had to look it up myself.
Artemis II is not a landing.
The crew flies around the Moon and comes back.
It's a crewed flyby.
Sí, exacto.
Yes, exactly.
La nave Orion va a la Luna, hace una vuelta, y regresa a la Tierra.
The Orion spacecraft goes to the Moon, makes one orbit, and returns to Earth.
No hay aterrizaje en la superficie.
There's no landing on the surface.
Pero es muy importante porque es la primera prueba con personas a bordo.
But it's very important because it's the first test with people on board.
The crew is four people.
Three Americans and one Canadian, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.
Hansen is the first Canadian to fly beyond low Earth orbit in history.
A ver, esto es interesante.
Look, this is interesting.
Canadá es parte del programa Artemis porque la Agencia Espacial Canadiense construyó un brazo robótico para la estación lunar.
Canada is part of the Artemis program because the Canadian Space Agency built a robotic arm for the lunar station.
Es un intercambio, digamos.
It's an exchange, so to speak.
The extraordinary thing is that the question everyone keeps asking is the obvious one.
Why did it take fifty years?
We went to the Moon six times between 1969 and 1972, and then just, stopped.
Bueno, la respuesta corta es: la política y el dinero.
Well, the short answer is: politics and money.
El programa Apolo era muy caro y era parte de la guerra fría.
The Apollo program was very expensive and it was part of the Cold War.
Cuando los americanos ganaron la carrera espacial, el gobierno ya no quería pagar.
When the Americans won the space race, the government no longer wanted to pay.
I mean, at its peak NASA was getting about four percent of the federal budget.
Today it gets less than half a percent.
The Space Race was fundamentally a propaganda exercise disguised as science.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Sin la competencia con los soviéticos, sin ese miedo, el gobierno americano perdió el interés.
Without the competition with the Soviets, without that fear, the American government lost interest.
Es una historia triste pero normal en la política.
It's a sad but normal story in politics.
Las crisis crean motivación.
Crises create motivation.
So before Artemis II, there was Artemis I in 2022.
Uncrewed.
The Orion capsule went to the Moon and back, no humans on board, just to test the systems.
That worked.
Sí, y fue importante.
Yes, and it was important.
La cápsula pasó veinticinco días en el espacio.
The capsule spent twenty-five days in space.
Hicieron muchas pruebas técnicas, especialmente con el escudo térmico.
They did a lot of technical tests, especially with the heat shield.
Cuando la nave vuelve a la Tierra, hace mucho calor, y el escudo protege a los astronautas.
When the spacecraft returns to Earth, it gets very hot, and the shield protects the astronauts.
The rocket they're using, the SLS, the Space Launch System, is the most powerful rocket NASA has ever built.
More powerful than the Saturn V from the Apollo era.
Which is impressive, and also, look, it costs an extraordinary amount of money.
Mira, aquí hay un debate muy interesante.
Look, here there's a very interesting debate.
El cohete SLS cuesta más de cuatro mil millones de dólares por lanzamiento.
The SLS rocket costs more than four billion dollars per launch.
Y SpaceX, la empresa de Elon Musk, tiene cohetes mucho más baratos.
And SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, has much cheaper rockets.
Four billion dollars.
Per launch.
And Musk's Starship, which is designed to actually land humans on the Moon for Artemis III, costs a fraction of that to operate.
The tension between the old NASA model and commercial space is real.
Es que la ironía es grande.
The irony is significant.
NASA necesita a SpaceX para aterrizar en la Luna.
NASA needs SpaceX to land on the Moon.
Contrataron a la empresa privada de Musk para construir el módulo de aterrizaje.
They contracted Musk's private company to build the landing module.
Sin SpaceX, Artemis III no es posible.
Without SpaceX, Artemis III is not possible.
Which creates this somewhat uncomfortable situation where the future of American human spaceflight depends heavily on a billionaire who also has a role in the current administration.
That is, to put it mildly, complicated.
Sí, bueno, la política siempre está presente.
Yes, well, politics is always present.
Pero el objetivo científico es real, ¿no?
But the scientific objective is real, isn't it?
La Luna tiene recursos importantes.
The Moon has important resources.
Hay agua en los polos, y el agua es fundamental para vivir en el espacio.
There's water at the poles, and water is fundamental for living in space.
Right, so this is the part I find genuinely exciting.
Water ice at the lunar south pole.
If you can use that water, you can drink it, you can make oxygen to breathe, and you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel.
A ver, esto es muy importante.
Look, this is very important.
Si los astronautas pueden producir combustible en la Luna, es mucho más fácil ir a Marte después.
If astronauts can produce fuel on the Moon, it's much easier to go to Mars afterwards.
La Luna puede ser como una estación de servicio en el espacio.
The Moon can be like a service station in space.
The plan is eventually, with Artemis III and beyond, to establish a permanent presence near the lunar south pole.
They call it the Lunar Gateway, a small space station in lunar orbit.
Think of it as a waypoint.
La verdad es que el polo sur de la Luna es fascinante también por otra razón.
Honestly, the south pole of the Moon is fascinating for another reason too.
Hay cráteres donde nunca llega la luz del sol.
There are craters where sunlight never reaches.
Nunca, en millones de años.
Never, in millions of years.
Y dentro de esos cráteres puede haber agua desde hace mucho tiempo.
And inside those craters there may be water that has been there for a very long time.
Permanently shadowed regions, they're called.
The temperature in those craters can drop to minus 200 degrees Celsius.
Colder than Pluto.
It's essentially a natural deep freeze that has preserved material from the early solar system.
Mira, y aquí hay otro factor importante.
Look, and here's another important factor.
China también quiere ir al polo sur de la Luna.
China also wants to go to the south pole of the Moon.
China y Rusia tienen su propio programa lunar.
China and Russia have their own lunar program.
La competencia espacial volvió, pero ahora es diferente.
The space competition returned, but now it's different.
The China factor is significant.
Their Chang'e program has been impressive, they landed a rover on the far side of the Moon in 2019, which no one had ever done.
And their timeline for crewed lunar missions is 2030.
Es que hay personas en la NASA que dicen abiertamente que la competencia con China es la razón principal del programa Artemis.
There are people at NASA who say openly that competition with China is the main reason for the Artemis program.
No es solo ciencia, es también geopolítica.
It's not just science, it's also geopolitics.
Como el programa Apolo, pero en el siglo veintiuno.
Like the Apollo program, but in the twenty-first century.
Here's the thing.
Europe is part of this too.
The European Space Agency contributed the service module for the Orion capsule.
The part that provides power and propulsion.
Without ESA, Orion doesn't fly.
Sí, y España tiene un papel en la ESA.
Yes, and Spain has a role in ESA.
Hay empresas españolas que fabrican componentes para misiones espaciales.
There are Spanish companies that manufacture components for space missions.
Hay ingenieros españoles que trabajaron en partes de la nave Orion.
There are Spanish engineers who worked on parts of the Orion spacecraft.
No es solo una historia americana.
It's not just an American story.
I didn't know that, actually.
That's worth sitting with.
Look, I spent years covering wars and politics, and there's something I find almost disarming about a project where nations that argue about everything else build something together and it actually works.
Bueno, es verdad.
Well, that's true.
La cooperación espacial sobrevivió muchos conflictos.
Space cooperation survived many conflicts.
Durante años, astronautas americanos y cosmonautas rusos vivieron juntos en la Estación Espacial Internacional, incluso cuando las relaciones políticas eran malas.
For years, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts lived together on the International Space Station, even when political relations were bad.
And now Russia is out of that relationship, essentially.
They're in the Chinese camp for deep space.
So Artemis is also, in a way, a story about how the architecture of international cooperation in space is being redrawn.
La verdad es que Artemis II va a recoger datos científicos muy importantes durante el viaje.
Honestly, Artemis II is going to collect very important scientific data during the journey.
Los astronautas van a estudiar la radiación en el espacio profundo.
The astronauts are going to study radiation in deep space.
Esto es fundamental para planificar misiones más largas, como un viaje a Marte.
This is fundamental for planning longer missions, like a trip to Mars.
Radiation is genuinely one of the biggest unsolved problems for long-duration spaceflight.
Beyond the Van Allen belts, which shield low Earth orbit, the radiation environment is brutal.
Apollo missions were short enough that it wasn't critical.
Mars is eight months away.
A ver, hay una pregunta que la gente hace mucho: ¿por qué gastar tanto dinero en la Luna cuando hay problemas aquí en la Tierra?
Look, there's a question people ask a lot: why spend so much money on the Moon when there are problems here on Earth?
Es una pregunta válida.
It's a valid question.
¿Qué piensas tú, Fletcher?
What do you think, Fletcher?
I've gone back and forth on this my whole life.
But the honest answer is that space investment tends to generate returns nobody predicted.
Teflon, memory foam, water purification systems, scratch-resistant lenses.
The spinoffs from Apollo touched everything.
Es que eso es cierto.
That's true.
Y los teléfonos móviles son posibles en parte porque la NASA necesitaba computadoras pequeñas para las misiones Apolo.
And mobile phones are possible partly because NASA needed small computers for the Apollo missions.
La investigación espacial cambió la tecnología que usamos todos los días.
Space research changed the technology we all use every day.
I want to be honest about something, though.
NASA's track record on timelines is, let's say, ambitious.
Artemis has been delayed multiple times.
The scheduled Moon landing under Artemis III keeps sliding.
We should watch April 1st carefully before assuming everything goes smoothly.
Mira, sí, los retrasos de la NASA son famosos.
Look, yes, NASA delays are famous.
Pero también hay que decir que la seguridad es la razón principal.
But you also have to say that safety is the main reason.
Cuando el transbordador Challenger explotó en 1986, fue una tragedia terrible.
When the Challenger shuttle exploded in 1986, it was a terrible tragedy.
La NASA aprendió mucho de eso.
NASA learned a lot from that.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
I remember where I was when Challenger happened.
And Columbia in 2003.
These aren't bureaucratic delays, most of the time.
They are people being appropriately careful with other people's lives.
Bueno, para terminar, quiero decir algo sobre la importancia cultural de este momento.
Well, to finish, I want to say something about the cultural importance of this moment.
Hay personas jóvenes que nunca vivieron la época de Apolo.
There are young people who never lived through the Apollo era.
Para ellos, los astronautas en la Luna son historia antigua, como los romanos.
For them, astronauts on the Moon are ancient history, like the Romans.
Artemis II puede cambiar eso.
Artemis II can change that.
That's the thing that stays with me.
My grandkids are going to watch four people fly around the Moon on a Tuesday.
And maybe that Tuesday is the moment one of them decides to become an engineer or a scientist.
You can't put a price on that, really.
La verdad es que sí.
Honestly, yes.
Y yo creo que cuando los astronautas vuelven y hablan de lo que vieron, de la Tierra pequeña y azul en la oscuridad, eso cambia a las personas.
And I think that when the astronauts return and talk about what they saw, about the small blue Earth in the darkness, that changes people.
Es algo muy humano, muy universal.
It's something very human, very universal.
No es solo americano, es de todos nosotros.
It's not just American, it belongs to all of us.