If you’re reading this today, I am in George Town, the capital city of the Cayman Islands in the middle of my third Royal Caribbean cruise.

I’m writing this column before shipping off from Port Canaveral in Florida along the Space Coast, a short drive away from the launchpad where the Artemis 2 mission to orbit the moon took off.

It seems every time I leave for my annual vacation, which sometimes is a cruise but usually is a week’s stay at my mother-in-law’s timeshare in Kissimmee, I miss witnessing a rocket launch of some sort. These days, it’s usually a SpaceX launch. In fact, the robotic ships where SpaceX booster rockets land are often docked close to the place from which Royal Caribbean ships depart.

In this case, I had to join most of my fellow Americans and other interested people and watch Artemis 2 blast off from the comfort of my living room, courtesy of NASA, YouTube and CBS News. It was beautiful, exciting and nerve-wracking.

I was 4 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded, so I only have vague memories. But I was in my early 20s when Columbia disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere, breaking up over Texas. While SpaceX has had success in bringing astronauts to the International Space Station, NASA has not sent a person since space shuttle Atlantis in 2011. So, while I was yelling “Let’s go” at my TV, I was also gripping the arm of my couch hoping, maybe even praying, that nothing would go wrong.

I continued to monitor the mission last Monday as the Orion spacecraft made its approach to the moon, breaking the human spaceflight distance record, surpassing the failed Apollo 13 mission. The images that came back to Earth of the surface of the moon were breathtaking.

I can’t say I was one of those little boys who specifically dreamed of being an astronaut. But I have always been interested in space in one form or another. My Dad and family friend David Kelly got me interested in the original “Star Trek” series from an early age. One need only go to my office in the State Capitol Building to see my model U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701 and my Lego U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

I had a large plastic space shuttle Discovery as a child. If there was a space shuttle launch, you can bet our TV was on CNN with John Holliman doing the countdown. I’ve seen two space shuttles up close, one at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and one at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The shuttle really is a marvel to behold.

The Artemis mission is something I’ve been anxiously awaiting for some time. But as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy said at the end of “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” “the bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.”

The Artemis project began in 2017 at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term. But the main components of Artemis, specifically the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft, have been on NASA’s drawing board far longer than that. In fact, the first test launch of SLS with the Orion spacecraft was supposed to be in 2016. After years of delays, the test launch finally happened back in 2022 – the Artemis 1 unmanned mission.

There will be an Artemis 3 mission next year to test docking procedures for the Orion spacecraft and lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. But in 2028, Artemis IV will be our first moon landing since the end of 1972 with Apollo 17.

Some might say these missions are a waste of taxpayer dollars and resources. Never mind that most of our modern technology today stems from breakthroughs made for various space missions. These missions are important in expanding our knowledge of science and the universe, and improving our technology and making it more efficient.

And sure, there are private companies like SpaceX doing great work, but science and exploration has always had government as a patron. There is a role for government in funding projects like Artemis – especially if we one day start colonizing the Moon or setting up the first bases on Mars.

Missions like Artemis also bring us all together as one people. The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft include components from around the world, with different governments working together. And the mission includes notable firsts: the first person of color, the first woman, the oldest person and the first non-American to orbit the moon.

At least for a moment on April 1, people from around the world affixed their eyes on a rocket going up. At that moment, all of the nonsense faded away, replaced with the wonder at all the amazing things we as a species are still capable of.

Here is to the brave four-person Artemis 2 crew.