We Need Dreamers Again

I just sat and watched, thanks to modern technology, the Artemis II launch.

There has been a lot of controversy around this mission. Some of it has been about safety. Some people were frustrated by the delays, the scrubs, the caution, the waiting. But honestly, if you are launching human beings into space, I would rather see oversafety than carelessness. They scrubbed the first launch, fixed what needed fixing, and then launched when they were satisfied. That is how it should be.

But the bigger argument I keep seeing is this: Why are we going back to the moon?

And I keep coming back to a much simpler answer.

Why not?

Maybe the better question is not why we are going back to the moon. Maybe the better question is why so many people have stopped believing we should reach for anything bigger than whatever disaster is sitting in front of us this week.

We are living in a time of tension again. A time of conflict, division, posturing, and far too many people beating the drums of war. It feels, in some ways, like an echo of an older world. Different details, same sickness. The same appetite for conflict. The same willingness to pour lives, money, and attention into destruction while acting as though building something bold, beautiful, and forward-looking is somehow irresponsible.

So let me ask the question that seems just as important: why is the United States still tangled up in the Middle East? Why is the world still feeding war after war after war? Why are we still acting as if violence is vision?

Wars solve very little, and what they do solve usually comes at a cost so high that the word “solution” hardly fits. Too often, one power is simply replaced by another, and ordinary people are left holding the bill in blood, grief, and ruin.

So no, I do not think the problem is that we are going to the moon.

I think the problem is that we have forgotten how to dream without apologizing for it.

With the eventual decommissioning of the International Space Station, we are standing at another threshold. So what comes next? Do we shrink? Do we retreat? Do we keep our eyes fixed only on the fires below us? Or do we look up again?

Because space is not the final frontier. It is the next frontier.

The moon matters not only because of science, not only because of technology, not only because of exploration, but because it reminds us that human beings are supposed to reach. We are supposed to imagine. We are supposed to build toward something more than survival, outrage, and endless war.

We need dreamers again.

Where did they go?

Where did we go?

This cannot be left to the United States alone. Canada, it is time to step up too. If we want to call ourselves a serious nation, then we need to act like one. Not only in trade disputes, not only in reaction to tariffs, not only when our backs are against the wall, but in vision. In purpose. In ambition. In imagination.

And not just Canada. India, China, Russia, Europe, all of us. Space should be one of the places where humanity remembers how to do something greater than tear itself apart. Russia, get out of Ukraine and do something worthy of the future. The rest of the world, stop pretending that war is maturity and dreaming is childishness.

It is not childish to dream.

It is necessary.

The moon is not the whole answer. It never was. But it is a symbol, and symbols matter. It tells us that we are still capable of lifting our eyes beyond the battlefield, beyond the headlines, beyond the petty and the brutal, and toward something that asks more of us than hatred does.

So to those who say we should not be going back, I will say it plainly: I think you are wrong.

We should be going.

Not because everything on Earth is fixed, but because it is not. Not because humanity has become wise, but because it still has a chance to become wiser. Not because the moon will save us, but because reaching for something higher may remind us that we are meant for more than this endless cycle of war, fear, and short-sightedness.

We need to dream again.

And sometimes the next step in that dream begins by looking up at the moon and saying, yes, we are going back.

Godspeed.