Dale Earnhardt Jr. Had No Clue The Artemis II Launch Was Happening, But That's Not As Weird As It Sounds

It seemed like everyone and their mother had their eyeballs glued to the TV or the necks craned to the sky to get a glimpse of the historic Artemis II launch… except Dale Earnhardt Jr.

He said he nearly missed it and didn't even know it was happening until just minutes before lift-off.

That's right, somehow the biggest space mission in 50 years managed to fly under the radar for someone who doesn't live in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah… how did that fly under the radar?

But the more I thought about it, the more I get how it can happen.

I mean, sure, not everyone is on the Internet all the time reading OutKick articles (they should be, though), so some stuff is going to slip through the cracks.

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But I feel like not realizing something big is happening is a growing thing. It's not that people are trying to be "too-cool-for-the-room" (imagine being too cool for being excited about space travel), I think TV is the problem.

We don't really have monumental, touchstone events anymore.

This first hit me in college. I remember walking into the student late-night comedy show I worked on (yes, the ladies were all over me in college) on the Monday after the Super Bowl.

"So what did you guys think of the game last night?" I asked my friends.

"Oh, that was last night?" one responded.

How… how do you not know when the Super Bowl is? Even if you're not a sports fan, surely knowing when it is is unavoidable based on news coverage and commercials.

It dawned on me afterward that that used to be the case, but it isn't anymore.

Is the way we watch TV taking away big, shared cultural moments like a rocket launch? (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Let's go back to the Apollo missions. The last trip to the moon — Apollo 17 — was in late 1972, and, at the time, there were three networks: NBC, ABC, and CBS.

If you wanted to watch TV at 8 PM on a Monday in 1972, your choices were to watch The Rookies, Gunsmoke, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, or you could stare at the wall.

I guess you could've read a book, but what are you, some kind of nerd?

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My point is that everyone was watching the same three things, and therefore, if there was a commercial or they broke into the programming for a news update, most people saw it.

Now, how many options do you have? Infinite.

I mean, how many times does someone tell you about a new show and you have no clue what they're talking about or even where to watch it?

"Yeah, I'm really into this new show called ‘Bollocks Town.' It's like a British crime drama with some comedy and sci-fi thrown in. It's really good. It's over on Scrunch+… Oh, that's the new name for ScrunchMAX... You need a Scrunch+ Premium account to watch it, but it's soooooo worth it…"

That's cool, but we've lost those monumental moments where people say, "I remember where I was when…"

So, as crazy as it sounds for someone to be completely unaware of a major space mission until the rockets were starting to heat up on the launch pad, it's going to be a more common thing.

And that's kind of a shame.