Omission of Sacrifice to Artemis Blamed for Recent NASA Rocket Launch Troubles
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After the second consecutive failure to launch its latest rocket system in just a few days, speculation has been intensifying concerning the divisive decision made by top NASA brass to forego a ceremonial sacrifice to the Olympian goddess after whom the mission, Artemis I, was named.
“We’ve come full circle back to ancient Greece I see, huh?” pondered a grizzled engineer working on the project and speaking on condition of anonymity. “People don’t want to hear it, but once is a mistake, twice is a pattern. Normal systems engineering models won’t do us any good when we’re dealing with such reckless inability to consider even the most basic of our assumptions. I mean, quantum stuff and relativity? Are you seriously going to tell me with a straight face that they’re anything other than space magic elaborately put to math? We use that math to build things that work on top of them, but let’s not pretend we can totally vibe relativistically as if it’s nothing, mentally speaking, eh? What’s a capricious moon goddess next to it then? Just throw her on top of the pile with all the other funky stuff in the universe! The bastards peddling all this chthonian hubris in here will be the doom of the entire project, mark my words!”
The Greek goddess has been historically associated with fierce human independence and the untamed wilderness of nature. Since many traditions throughout ancient Greece have also associated her with our planet’s moon, honoring her by naming the entire project after her was initially taken to be enough by even the most secretly superstitious among the space agency’s members. This sentiment is quickly changing, however, as recent setbacks have triggered a reaction by many who are slowly starting to think outside the box. “I went to Greece for vacation one summer and I’m telling you, that whole Dodecatheon thing they had going on over there in the past? It’s the real deal, those Greeks really knew what’s up. Or maybe it was the drugs that made me see it too, no idea,” said yet another anonymous employee of the agency.
Meanwhile, NASA administrator Bill Nelson is having none of this. “I’ve had it up to here with all this mythological bullshit lately!” he said as he exaggerated the movement of his right arm in an effort to indicate just up to where exactly he’s had it with all the mythological bullshit lately. “I’m running a space agency here, son! What the hell do these fools expect us to do exactly, start burning incense and recite goddamn Homer dancing around the rocket to purify it of negative fucking energy? To subject myself to this dumbfuckery to appease the usual fools while running for Senate, I’d understand. But to even have to explain this shit to scientists and engineers and data analysts of all people!? SpaceX already has a motherfucking self-parking space rocket and we’re talking about freaking Delphic Oracles here! Miss me with this Olympian nonsense, boy, what even is Artemis the goddess of again? Freaking deer and trees and valleys and childbirth and hunting and nature and the moon? Might as well throw the rest of the universe in there while we’re at it and spare us the effort of naming literally every other thing in existence!”
Bringing up the plan to appease the supposed angry goddess with a late boar sacrifice proposed by some of the agency’s engineers did nothing to calm the agitated former Senator. “Do you know what we do with wild hogs in Florida? We fucking shoot them in the face, that’s what! It’s an infestation of titanic proportions out there, and you’re talking to me about capturing one and dragging it all the way to the base before disposing of it in a ceremony like we’re in some kind of cult? What’s next, am I supposed to throw a freaking drama festival while I have my engineers here pulling all-nighters trying to troubleshoot fucking gas leaks to somehow make the October launch by some miracle with everyone breathing down our necks from the sidelines!?”
“Motherfucking Hercules was running around for twelve years to appease the gods, for god’s sake! And then the guy tells him to go capture that Hind and Artemis gets mad because it was apparently her favorite animal or Zeus trying to get laid or some shit! You can’t win with these fools, you as much as sneeze anywhere on Earth, you’re bound to be spitting on some holy fern or grass or some crap of that sort! And how is this even supposed to go down exactly anyway, provided we would ever consider doing it? Because I’m sure we’ll have the ceremony at the base of the rocket and then some idiot nerd will interrupt to say that we need to have it atop the loading platform instead and that we then need to take the slaughtered fucker’s blood and smear it all over the nozzles and I’m gonna fucking lose it then and there, I’m telling you!” continued the furious administrator.
Upon hearing the understandable frustration but otherwise rational questioning of the very hypothesis expressed by his director, the anonymous engineer smirked and explained, shaking his head in a disappointed manner while strumming his guitar, “Look buddy, I’m an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like “Are gods real?” because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems. For instance, is it probable that a stubborn ancient Greek goddess is holding us all hostages here because we forgot to honor her like we’re in some sort of Spartan military camp preparing for a suicide mission? Absolutely not! But am I gonna test it given the chance? Someone go fetch me the goddamn thing we’re carving up and see for yourself!”
“If it’s stupid but it works, it simply works and I get on with my day,” said the old engineer wisely, and he didn’t hold back from criticizing the current directorial sentiment within NASA. “That’s the true kind of pragmatist attitude we should be pursuing here, not this overinflated epistemological arrogance being pushed around as if the Greeks didn’t teach us nothing after all, but then again, philosophers, engineers, all that. Now stay here until the boys come back with the meat we sent them to get for us to practice before the big day, I wanna show you the cleanest way to go about it, my father was a farmer.”
The demonstration had to be delayed as some of the animals escaped and had to be tracked down inside the facility.
