
Before We Knew We Could Survive
From Project Mercury's desperate survival missions to Artemis learning to build lunar infrastructure—exploring how space exploration evolved from fear-driven engineering to the discipline of endurance and continuity.

From Project Mercury's desperate survival missions to Artemis learning to build lunar infrastructure—exploring how space exploration evolved from fear-driven engineering to the discipline of endurance and continuity.

Years ago, I watched Prometheus and fixated on a small moment most people glossed over. Inside the alien structure, two spherical drones fly autonomously through dark, unknown corridors, scanning, mapping, and reconstructing the interior in real time. The scene wasn't flashy. It was practical. And it planted a thought that never quite faded: Why isn't this real yet?

AI did not wait for permission to change aviation or space. It simply stepped in and started doing the work. In only a few months, we moved from talking about autonomous systems as distant possibilities to watching them fly fighter jets, navigate the darkest parts of the Moon, and run on hardware powerful enough to reshape the pace of innovation.