In July 1969, as NASA’s Apollo 11 moon landing took place, humanity witnessed something remarkable, and potentially unifying. The words spoken by Neil Armstrong, “one small step for man…”, were not narrowly political. They offered us a shared perspective of the Earth, seen from afar, appearing whole, fragile and without borders.
52 years later we are in the era of the Artemis programme and we return to the moon, no longer as tentative explorers, but as architects of colonisation, planning habitats, supply chains and eventual commercialisation. The language has shifted from exploration to utilisation; from wonder to infrastructure; from ‘we went to the moon’ to ‘we will build in space’.
The question, then, is not only ‘what progress has been made?’ but ‘what kind of progress have we been pursuing, and at what cost?’
The undeniable achievements
It would be churlish to deny the scale of technical progress between Apollo and Artemis. Computing power has increased exponentially, materials science, robotics, telecommunications, and systems engineering have all advanced to levels unimaginable in 1969. The Saturn V rocket that once carried astronauts to the moon has been replaced by reusable rockets, autonomous navigation systems, and global satellite networks. This progress has delivered tangible benefits. Satellite technology underpins modern life, GPS navigation, climate monitoring, telecommunications, and disaster response. Medical imaging, water purification systems, and even everyday materials are products of space research. In this sense, the Apollo programme sparked innovations that improved lives across the globe.
Artemis too promises new knowledge, particularly about the moon’s south pole, water ice, and the long-term viability of human presence beyond Earth. It speaks to a deep human impulse: to explore, to know, to extend the boundaries of our experience and influence.
And yet, if we pause here, we risk telling only half the story.
Who has progress served?
Apollo was, in part, a geopolitical performance. A cold war demonstration of supremacy. It served national prestige as much as human curiosity. The benefits, though real, were unevenly distributed. While the United States invested billions in reaching the moon, many of its own citizens were excluded from the prosperity such technological prowess symbolised.
Artemis is set in a different but related context. It is no longer solely a state-led endeavour. Private corporations, SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos) play a critical role. The moon is increasingly seen not as a shared human heritage, but as a site of potential economic extraction: rare minerals, fuel production, strategic positioning.
Progress, in this framing, serves those with the capacity to invest, to control and to extract. Knowledge and innovation are valued not for their intrinsic contribution to human flourishing, but for their ability to enhance efficiency, profitability, and control.
We might ask, then: when we return to the moon, who goes? Who decides? And who benefits from what is found there?
The price we do not see
Every narrative of progress carries with it a shadow, a set of costs that are rarely accounted for in the celebratory telling.
First, there is the environmental cost. The technologies that enabled Apollo and now sustain Artemis are deeply entangled with extractive industries on Earth. Rare earth minerals, fossil fuels, and complex global supply chains underpin our capacity to reach the stars. The irony is clear: we extend our reach beyond the planet while degrading the very systems that sustain life upon it.
Second, there is the social cost. The resources devoted to space exploration, though often justified by long-term benefits, not only exist alongside persistent inequalities but they demand them. In the UK, including here in Yorkshire, communities continue to face challenges in housing, health, and economic security. The contrast is not an argument against exploration, but a reminder that our priorities are ethical choices, not neutral inevitabilities.
Third, there is a more subtle, existential cost: the loss of wonder itself. The Apollo images of Earth, the Blue Marble and Earthrise, invited a shift in our consciousness. They called forth a sense of humility, even reverence. By contrast, the contemporary discourse around Artemis often reduces the cosmos to a resource frontier. The moon becomes a site to be managed, optimised, and monetised. In this shift, something vital risks being lost.
Progress reconsidered
What if progress were not measured solely by what we can do, but by how we choose to do it, and for whom?
The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead reminds us that reality is not composed of inert objects, but of relationships and processes. From this perspective, progress is not the accretion of capability, but the deepening of our participation in the web of life. Seen in this light, the journey from Apollo to Artemis is at best ambiguous. We have become more capable, certainly. But have we become more wise? More attentive? More caring? Better stewards?
The Earth, viewed from the moon, has not changed. It remains a delicate, interdependent system. What has changed is our orientation toward it, and toward each other.
A different horizon
There is another way to read this story. Apollo showed us the Earth as a whole. It revealed, perhaps unintentionally, the fragility and unity of life. It offered a glimpse of what David Bohm might call an implicate order, a deeper coherence beneath apparent fragmentation of cold war politics.
Artemis, if guided by a different ethic, could build on this insight. It could become not a project of extraction, but of stewardship. Not a race for resources, but a practice of learning how to dwell responsibly beyond Earth.
But this would require a shift, from an ethic of impact and accumulation to an ethic of care. From domination to participation. From seeing the cosmos as something to be used, to recognising it as something we are already part of.
The question that remains
52 years on, the distance between Apollo and Artemis is not only technological, but moral and philosophical. We stand always at a threshold. We can continue to extend the logic that has brought us here, efficiency, control, and extraction, or we can pause, and ask a different question:
‘What would it mean to explore, not as masters of the universe, but as participants within it?’
Until we answer that, our progress, however extraordinary, will remain incomplete, even perhaps ultimately suicidal.
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