Disclaimer: Warning: contains hope, competence, and people who can spell “principle.” If you’re allergic to optimism or prefer your space program run by reality-TV clowns, leave now.

Here’s the thing: while our cosplay mobster-in-chief is busy selling “Gold Cards,” shaking down companies for donations, and reposting AI-generated Star Trek fanfiction as public policy, NASA is out there quietly working. Not posturing, not grifting, not screaming on cable news. Working.

Real engineers. Real astronauts. Real scientists who spent their childhoods staring at glow-in-the-dark constellations on their bedroom ceilings, dreaming of rockets instead of reality TV. These are people who didn’t say, “I want to be a grifter’s meat puppet when I grow up.” They said, “I want to go to the Moon, and then to Mars.” And damned if they aren’t actually building the ships to do it.

Artemis II is stacked and ready. The crew? Sharp, trained, and eager to take us further than any humans have gone in half a century. Their spacecraft? Named Integrity. Can you even imagine that word painted on anything else flying out of Washington these days? Integrity—something the suits in D.C. treat like kryptonite, but which NASA still wears like armor.

Artemis III is more than blueprints; it’s taking physical shape. Orion is alive with power. The lander systems are crunching through tests. The contractors—yes, even the corporate suits—are being forced to prove they can actually deliver hardware that works. And through it all, NASA keeps its eye on the sky instead of the circus.

Because here’s the kicker: the Moon doesn’t give a damn about MAGA. Physics doesn’t bend for politics. Rockets don’t launch on campaign slogans. Space doesn’t care if your uncle believes the Earth is flat or if the President thinks an AI med-bed will cure his bone spurs. In this game, things either fly or they don’t, and the only way they fly is through competence, precision, and relentless hard work.

And against all odds, America still has that. The Artemis program is proof that somewhere under the noise, under the lies, under the endless culture-war screaming, there are still people who believe in something bigger. People who know that the frontier doesn’t belong to billionaires alone—it belongs to all of us.

So while Washington rots like an old cantaloupe left on the counter, out at Kennedy, at Houston, in Huntsville, the lights are still on. The countdown clocks are still running. The work is still happening.

And that is the America worth saving. Not the America of Truth Social, not the America of Gold Cards, but the America that builds ships named Integrity and flies them higher than any political clown show could ever dream.

That America is still alive. And it’s aiming for the stars.