"That's One Small Step for [a] Man..."

"...One Giant Leap for Mankind." Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969, The Moon.

It doesn't seem like 35 years have gone by since that summer evening when the world held its breath and waited to hear the fate of two men on humanity's greatest adventure.

And yet it seems forever.

We all dreamed, the children of the 60s, of the continued exploration of near-earth space and the planets. We were excited and motivated by the pictures and the grainy video of our heroes in space. There was talk of a manned mission to Mars even before Armstrong and Aldrin bounced around the dusty plains of Mare Tranquilitatus. Six further missions landed on the moon, a dramatic self-rescue was formulated during Apollo 13 and space stations were launched. The science fiction writers were correct, we were a space faring species!

And then reality intruded.

Turns out that once we beat the Soviets to the Moon, interest waned. Mostly interest waned in Congress and the White House. Other priorities called for our attention and our tax dollars. Viet Nam raged. Protests against the war flared all over the country. Budgets were slashed. The final two Apollo spacecraft were sent to museums instead of into space.

Thirty-five years later, we couldn't get to the Moon if we wanted to. At least not in less than 10 years. We can barely keep the International Space Station in orbit. And the supposed successor to Apollo, the Space Shuttle hasn't flown in years.

Where are the dreamers today? Bush makes grand promises in a bid to stir the electorate, but fails to fund NASA to even its reduced levels of previous years. The Hubble Telescope sends back pictures from nearly the birth of the Universe and Cassini-Huygens enthralls us with incredible pictures of the rings of Saturn. But where are the humans, where are we, in this exploration of our tiny corner of the universe?

I thought I would one day be able to bounce around on the Moon like Armstrong and Aldrin. I was sure that I'd watch astronauts descend from the mechanical descendent of the primitive LEM onto the surface of Mars. Pictures are interesting and scientifically valuable, but real people on real adventures are what stoke our imaginations and our dreams.

Have our dreams become so pedestrian that these things are no longer possible?