I Am Not Immune To The Charms Of A Really Big Moon Rocket

I am occasionally high-minded about space exploration. The quest for knowledge, the nobility of the human spirit, the inexorable call of the great void, blah blah blah. But then there are other times when I admit to myself that a sizable part of my interest is a simple, primal enthrallment at finding out just how big we can make a huge rocket before setting it on fire.

On Saturday in Florida, NASA wheeled out the assembled components of the Artemis II mission, which as soon as early February will take humans around the Moon—farther from Earth than humans have ever been. It was quite literally wheeled out, on a massive and purpose-built crawler, carrying the Space Launch System vehicle and the Orion spacecraft the four miles from the assembly building to the launchpad. It was a slow roll—about 1 mph—because that is one big honking rocket. Including the launch tower, that's about 14 million pounds being moved.