Integrity

We love you from the Moon and back

TERMINATOR

I would like to sue for damages.

This week took the cake. And let it get trampled by photo-opp kids on Easter egg roll fake turf, poisoned by the odor of a 1,000 gilded uncapped Sharpies, and shoved down our throats with a chaser of 100-proof “end of civilization as we know it” tweets, until We the Poor People, reeling, had to call 911 for emergency help (i.e. navigate the White House and Capitol switchboards to demand our reps invoke the 25th Amendment).

He is unfit for office! We are all unsafe! I screamed into the voicemails. The nation is traumatized!

Meanwhile, in lovely languishing contrast to this, we have a quartet of beautiful space artists producing their violin-heavy Moon album, full of hugs, tears, poignant messages, otherworldly images of things like the terminator line between lunar day and night, crater-namings, and the best kind of nostalgia that simultaneously takes a leap into imagining a better tomorrow, as we took the last such mission from 1972 and propel it to updated perspective where space travel still matters, science and hope endure, and the future can still happen.

A Setting Earth, NASA

Without this yin/yang, I might have fallen to my death this week from the pathetic distance of office chair to floor, destroyed by the social media uproar. Contemplating, in the same moments a ship can be named “Integrity,” how the most powerful man on that brilliant marble we inhabit possesses none. At least, thanks to Artemis, we had something in the sky to consider. Something greater than this shitshow.

The ship name came from the crew and was announced at a NASA press conference in Sept. 2025:

The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers required for mission success. The name is also a nod to the extensive integrated effort—from the more than 300,000 spacecraft components to the thousands of people across the world—that must come together to venture to the Moon and back, inspire the world, and set course for a long-term presence at the Moon. Integrity is rooted in a shared core value of NASA, the agency’s astronaut office, and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

The definition of integrity come in three parts from Merriam-Webster:

1. firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility

2. an unimpaired condition : soundness

3. the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

Soon after the four astronauts surpassed the 1970 Apollo 13 record for the farthest humans have travelled from earth, they discovered a crater at the boundary between the near and far-side and had another special naming. They wanted to name the feature of the lunar landscape after crewmember Reid Wiseman’s late wife, who died of cancer too young in 2020, after urging him to continue focusing on his dream.

“So at certain times of the Moon’s transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth,” Jeremy Hansen said, his voice cracking. “We lost a loved one; her name was Carroll. The spouse of Reid, the mother of Katie and Ellie.”

The astronauts also saw another crater they asked to be named after their capsule, “Integrity.”

“Integrity and Carroll crater. Loud and clear,” Mission Control responded.

Ground Control to Major Tom: what we’ve got down here, in the meantime, what we’ve got here is failure to communicate. What do we name this?

Trump is tweeting on his Truth Social, Easter Sunday, before the crack of dawn,

Later Trump, flanked by a bunny and his forgettable wife, talks about war in a moment too surreal for even Donnie Darko:

ABC News screenshot

And they said normally when you’re in very hostile territory—and I don’t think it gets much more hostile than Iran, they’re capable fighters, they’re very tough people and there are others like that—you don’t mind when the enemy is weak but that enemy is strong. Not so strong like they were about a month ago, I can tell you, in fact right now they’re not too strong at all in my opinion, but we’re soon gonna find out, aren’t we?

But then he must have gotten the memo that it’s Christianity’s highest holiday and he’s at an egg roll of all things, so he continues:

Today we have more than 40,000 eggs supplied by all of the great egg farmers that are with us. So if eggs is a big thing and it was a big thing to our great First Lady, who’s here someplace, I think this is our First Lady—what do you think of our First Lady? She’s a movie star.

Dementia Don wanders the lawn to grill reporters on who’s lower IQ, Biden or Kamala. Then he complains to kids about Biden’s use of the autopen. “Who likes the fake news?”

Around the same time, a holiday greeting from space to soothe our souls, from pilot Victor Glover:

Thank you to all of you for allowing us the immense privilege to be on this journey together. It’s quite amazing. And as we go on this journey, thinking about the NASA mission to explore the unknown in air and space, to innovate for the benefit of humanity, and to inspire the world through discovery. And as you’ve gone along on this journey with us, hopefully we’re doing just those things. And as we get close to the nearest point to the Moon and the farthest point from Earth, as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that’s love. Christ said in response to what was the greatest command that it was to love God with all that you are. And, he also being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, as we prepare to go out of radio communication, we’re still going to feel your love from Earth. And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the Moon.

The amazing images that keep coming:

Shadows Across Vavilov Crater

Moon, backlit by the Sun

This is what democracy looks like: the first Canadian on a moon mission, the first black man, the first woman.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

There are the suspenseful 40 minutes when the moon blocks radio signals and the crew is on the far side, in the blessed silence loud with awe. There are more colors than they’d imagined, more poetry! On April 6 from about 6:45 pm to 7:25 pm. we hold our collective breath.

After emerging from the fly by, more rousing, moony words by Christina Koch:

Houston, we have you the same and it is so great to hear from Earth again. To Asia, Africa, and Oceania, we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. When we burned this burn towards the moon, I said that we do not leave Earth but we choose it. And that is true. We will explore. We will build. We will build ships, we will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers. We will do radio astronomy. We will found companies. We will bolster industry. We will inspire. But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.

But then, on the morning of April 7, another terrorizing tweet from our Commander who chooses something altogether sinister.

Is this real life? It can’t be. Perhaps we’re all just trapped in a video game where clicks get billionaires ever more dollars (it’s true). Take me back to that floaty place where sweet scientists talk in lovely tongues.

Victor Glover on the mic again, preaching:

I think that for me, one of the really important personal perspectives that I have up here, I can really see Earth as one thing. When I read the Bible and I look at all of the amazing things that were done for us who were created, it’s you. You have this amazing place, this spaceship. You guys are talking to us because we’re in a spaceship really far from Earth, but you’re on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us a place to live in the universe, in the cosmos.

Maybe the distance we are from you makes you think what we’re doing is special, but we’re the same distance from you. I’m trying to tell you, just trust me, you are special in all of this emptiness.

This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday, thinking about, you know, all the cultures, all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in god or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing and that we’ve got to get through it together.

You can’t help but wonder what Glover means by “get through it.” Get through this terrible time, I assume, these manufactured wars, when a country, the whole world really, is being held hostage by a mindless amoral maniac. Where our democracy is on death-watch. You could feel the crew cringing when they had to take his call from the White House after returning from the dark side. He’s still here?

It takes an astronaut to see it clearly. Former astronaut Mark Kelly calls it like it is. He was among the group of congressional Democrats in Nov. 2025 who filmed a video to urge troops to disobey any illegal orders, not to commit war crimes—like the President is calling for in neon highlighter now. From the Guardian:

“I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial—and that was that members of the military should follow the law,” the Arizona Democratic senator, a former US navy officer and astronaut who flew on four separate space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, told MS Now on Monday night.

Kelly then alluded to how the president went on social media to say Kelly and the others had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death”—while also republishing another user’s post containing the phrase “hang them.”

“And in response to that, Donald Trump said I should be executed, I should be hanged, I should be prosecuted,” Kelly said to political talkshow host Rachel Maddow.

He added: “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the constitution.”

MOONSCAPE

What we have here instead in the moonglow is love, sweet love, books and songs.

The phrase, “I love you to the moon and back” originates from the 1994 children’s book Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. In the story, Little Nutbrown Hare (more bunnies!) tells Big Nutbrown Hare, “I love you up to the moon,” to which Big Nutbrown Hare replies,

“Oh, that’s far... I love you to the moon and back.”

After the first moon mission of 1969, with Neil and Buzz of Apollo 11 setting foot on the lunar surface realizing Kennedy’s dream, and a series of flights to follow with the sixth and last in 1972 on Apollo 17 and a three-day visit, the Apollo program ended. But the moon-infused art of the era endured. David Bowie assumes his Ziggy Stardust persona and has a trippy Moonage Daydream in which he’s an alligator, a space invader. The Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon arrives in my birth year 1973, the eighth studio album of the British progressive rock band, which blew my mind in the ‘80s when we played it on my brother’s incredible basement speakers with the subwoofers that rocked the world.

The lyrics and soaring conclusion of “Eclipse,” the 10th and final track, seem to demand inclusion on the playlist for the ages as they encompass everything we can fathom and beyond… Wait, what’s that? Melania issues in a non sequitur press conference that she never had sex with that man (Epstein), and, oh thank goodness, in the next moment, we know that these Gen-X heroes have made it back. Peppermint candy-striped parachutes splashdown in the ocean as planned, the crew emerging one by one, they are safe. Safe and sound, incorruptible, mission complete.

Closing words from Reid Wiseman and then the final song:

The purpose of humanity is joy and lifting one another up. Creating together verses destroying. And that’s how I launched… I launched with the expectation that I would see the proof of it with my own eyes. And I definitely have. And I think that’s really reassuring. And we’re glad that we can remind people that we can do better as a human race by lifting one another up and collaborating.

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you loved
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give (All you give)
And all that you deal (Whoa-oh)
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow, or steal (Hey-hey)
And all you create
And all you destroy (Whoa-oh, oh-oh)
And all that you do
And all that you say (Hey, yeah)
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet (Everyone you meet)
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight (Ho, ho, ho, ho)
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that’s to come
And everything under the sun is in tune (Everything)
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

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