Many moons ago we had a dream...

Have you ever felt cheated by a grand expectation that never quite developed? I’ve nursed an intermittently painful pang of injustice since 1969 - in fact I was pleased to see, the other day, that this year is being officially marked as the 40th anniversary of my injustice - also known as the first moon landing. But despite this acknowledgement I sense that my lifetime disappointment is not about to end anytime soon.

We have just been told that ‘Nasa has successfully launched two spacecraft to the Moon on missions that will pave the way for a return to the lunar surface by US astronauts’. Well if you don’t mind me saying - about time too!

I grew up at the height of space race fever - it was a constant theme of both back garden kids’ games and adult conversations. And all the speculation was being backed up by real action with Apollos being fired out of Cape Canaveral every other day.

But then there was nothing... a big black void as wide and deep as space itself! As the real life action slowly but surely got scaled down, so the conversation in playgrounds and supermarkets turned to more mundane topics. At roughly the time we had been informed we be holidaying on the shores of the Sea of Tranquility the whole space thing had all but disappeared off the agenda entirely.

Hearing this latest news, that the moon is back on the radar, makes me wonder what went wrong. During a time when technology innovation continued to accelerate, with IT advances in particular leading the way, we appeared to leave the cosmos to its own devices. But why?

I understand that there was less cash to splash and that Cold War relations with Russia were beginning to thaw, but does that really account for the apparent shutdown on mission ‘Reach for the Stars’?

Another explanation could of course be that they never made it there in the first place! I know such conspiracy theory cases have been made over the years. Possibly you could have got away with an elaborate scam in those days of scratchy black and white TV and grainy newspaper pictures - mass communications mediums were still sufficiently sparse and fuzzy to fool the masses... possibly?

However, as communications became more sophisticated the opportunities to pull wool over eyes diminished, and maybe, just maybe, a moon landing and proper exploration were still beyond us.

However, as a child of hope in the ‘anything is possible’ 60s I prefer not to dwell on such theories and instead applaud the latest news from Nasa. I only hope that today’s generation of impressionable wide-eyed youngsters get more return on their dreams than I have so far had.

Jez