What Does The 'Artemis II' Mission Mean To Gen-X? Everything.
Image: NASA Pick a cliché about Gen-X; it doesn’t matter which. Drinking from the hose. Staying out until the lights came on. Being a “latchkey” kid. Late-night television ads literally asking our parents if they knew where we were. In the words of Han Solo, “it’s true. All of it.” We grew up living a life of independence. Our growth, though, was also shrouded in trauma. Born into the tail-end of the Vietnam Conflict, we lived through and witnessed more tragedy than most generations, not the least of which occurred on January 28, 1986. On that day, an entire generation of children witnessed in real-time, on boxy televisions wheeled into classrooms on metal carts, the disaster of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. We developed, honed, and mastered the coping mechanisms of sarcasm and cynicism as a result. And that is why the extraordinary events of the last week have triggered a long-suppressed PTSD many of us perhaps didn’t even know we were harboring. By "events...