NASA’s Artemis II mission represents America’s audacious return to human space flight. It’s bold and breathtaking in scope. It reflects well on the capabilities of our space technology. The only problem is that it’s unclear if anyone is truly paying attention.

Consider what is involved. Artemis is the first crewed lunar space voyage since 1972 and flown by a diverse and multinational team of astronauts. The 10-day mission involves circling the moon in a flyby manner (and not landing on the surface) and, in doing so, establishing the record for the farthest that humans have ever ventured into space. The broader mission goal is to demonstrate the capabilities that are considered critical to the success of future space missions, including establishing a permanent presence on the moon and ultimately pursuing missions deeper into space, including Mars.

An “opening act,” as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman describes it.

Sure, the liftoff from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center was viewed by a large crowd nearby. And there’s been plenty of media focus since then — including on inoperative toilets. But as the flight has progressed, it’s uncertain whether that initial public interest has been sustained. It doesn’t seem to come close to what it was during the heady days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, when astronauts were America’s great heroes and when every liftoff and splashdown were national events.

Indeed, the first moon landing and the heroic return of Apollo 13 riveted people across the globe.

There seems to be something of a “been there, done that” impression this time, a sense that the American public wasn’t “sold” in advance on the Artemis objectives. In terms of public interest, space flight seems to be losing out to college basketball.

And that’s hard to understand. The Artemis astronauts are truly going where no human has gone for over 50 years. They are traveling over 250,000 miles from Earth in what is the first crewed test flight of both the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. And we know from the astronaut illness on the recent SpaceX flight, and the frightening experience of Apollo 13, that things can go quite wrong in spaceflight — particularly when the astronauts are far from home. Those are big-time risks. But they contribute to the fundamentally courageous and awe-inspiring impression that goes with a human-led flight to the moon, even if it has been done before.

But somehow, it’s just not the same with Artemis. What are we missing here? Perhaps, as Cassius says in “The Life and Death of Julius Caesar,” the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves.

At one level, the reasons may be simple. There’s a war going on that’s dominating the news cycle. The astronauts won’t be landing on the moon. There’s far less public attachment to the space program than in its 1960s heyday. But perhaps, at a deeper level, the reasons may be more complex.

Perhaps, 50-some years later, we find visions of targets to be destroyed more gratifying than those of galaxies to be explored. Perhaps we’re more interested in pursuing spheres of influence than spheres in space. Perhaps the avalanche of artificial intelligence has dulled our capacity to be amazed by space technology. Perhaps we’re so divided as a country that we can’t rally around a national achievement.

Take your pick.

What seems to be missing is the curiosity and imagination that made us unique among nations. We may have forgotten that greatness can be found not only in the power and force of military might, but also in the desire to probe the mysteries of the universe we inhabit. We seem uninterested in demonstrating to the world, and to ourselves, that America can project the same great effort in times of peace that it has so successfully demonstrated in times of war.

It’s essentially the same set of challenges President John F. Kennedy spoke to at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962, in perhaps the most memorable speech of his life: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Those challenges are as enticing today as they were almost 64 years ago. And as Kennedy remarked in his Rice University speech, “The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”

There’s still time for an indifferent citizenry to get on board, to embrace NASA’s goals, to proceed into the future, to marvel at efforts to return to the lunar surface and, eventually, to chart the pathway to Mars. Because those are the things that great nations do.

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Michael Peregrine is a retired Chicago lawyer and a fan of space.

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