Must See TV last night was watching the Artemis 2 astronauts maneuver their Orion spacecraft into the proper attitude for reentry and then seeing them splash down in the Pacific, off the coast near San Diego.
It is a somewhat tense period, when you know they’re hurtling back into the atmosphere at 25,000 miles per hour—15,000 feet per second—hoping the heatshield does it job as they encounter temps around 5000 degrees F. There was a 6-minute blackout when the networks had to fill airtime, and everyone waited for confirmation that all was well. It came on cue, and we eventually watched as the drogue chutes deployed first, then the mains, and the capsule drifted to a soft touchdown, after having traveled beyond the moon and back.
It’s astonishing what we can do when we put our minds to something.
3 Cents' 