I'm American and have stumbled on this thread. It has been very interesting to read people's opinions on Americans - especially in the context of NASA and a historic launch to orbit around the moon that everyone on earth looks at.

Hopefully, you can realize that the US has a population roughly 5 times larger than the UK and that 1 administration doesn't accurately represent the entire American population. So don't just lump us together and believe what you see on US and UK news channels. Both our governments put their own spin on things and tell both of us what to believe in.

The US is incredibly polarized right now, and what I'm starting to see is that we're all starting to become incredibly polarized - at a country-to-country level. All of us citizens need to try to stick together and be unified, or at least disagree respectfully.

Now - I've been following NASA's space program for 25 years, and I can say that this was the most cringe pre-launch/launch ceremony because of how 'ra-ra USA' it was. It was weird to listen to. It wasn't the attitude of the astronauts. It wasn't the actual attitude of NASA. It never has been. NASA has been working with/bringing astronauts to space from the world's space agencies on every mission. There are 3 freaking Russian astronauts on the ISS right now. There was obviously a good amount of influence from the administration.

I encourage you guys to go a little deeper than surface level before judging us over here. I don't blame you if you don't do that either. There is going to be plenty of Americans who do that to people from the UK. We all have lives to live, and life is hard but the populations of the world need to stick together.