I remember on July 20, 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the surface of the moon; the first human in the history of our species to do so.
I was just five-years-old at the time but, as young as a I was, I understood the gravity of the event by how fascinated and nervous every adult that I knew was at the time in anticipation of it.
All of my family members and some neighbours were gathered in our living room, as so many others were in places all around the world, watching our black-and-white television (there were few colour TVs at the time) waiting for the landing craft to open its doors and the two astronauts on board to step onto the lunar surface.
It seemed to take forever but, finally, the door opened and there wasn’t a sound in the living room as everyone held their collective breath watching Armstrong take those few tentative steps down the ladder.
I was transfixed as he got to the bottom rung and said those now famous words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” as he put his foot onto the moon.
I had a very active imagination as a child (which I still have to this day) and I envisioned Armstrong sinking rapidly into quicksand and disappearing, or being attacked by some hellish moon creature that was hiding and waiting patiently for the Earthling to come out of the spaceship.
But, thankfully, nothing of that sort happened and everyone in my living room sat in wonder as the grainy images from the moon showed Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, walking around on the alien and dusty landscape.
I was so excited by the event that I quickly ran outdoors and began looking at the moon (it was an unusually clear night in that part of the world) to see if I could see them walking around up there.
I knew that something truly momentous had happened, but I didn’t grasp just how dangerous this whole expedition was until years later.
I recall Aldrin saying in an interview when I was in my 20s that he figured that the three-man crew had about a 50-50 chance, at best, to ever get back to Earth again.
But he said jokingly (at least I guessed that he was joking) that they had prepared and trained extensively to go to the moon for many years, and they were getting paid good money to do it as well, so they had no choice but to go.
Five more moon missions successfully followed Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon over the next three years, which saw a total of 12 people walking around up there (with some even playing golf!) and the presumption was by much of the rest of us Earth-bound people that we would soon have space stations on the lunar surface that anybody could visit, and that we would be well on our way to Mars by the late 1970s.
But now, more than a half a century later, not a single person has even as much as walked on the moon again since then, much less built any astro-hotels for space tourists to stay in, or spaceships that would take us to Mars in just a few days.
However, things are beginning to move in that direction again with the launch of NASA’s Artemis II last week, which has Canadian Jeremy Hansen among its four-person crew, that intends to fly around the moon before heading back to Earth in a 10-day mission.
The intent of the mission is to test the spacecraft’s systems before future lunar landing missions, which are planned for 2028.
Soon after, barring unforeseen circumstances, the construction of a permanent moon base will begin, and missions to Mars are envisioned as early as the late 2030s.
Of course, this calls for everything to go to plan, the new technology that is required is invented, and the investors continue to pour lots of money into an enterprise that has no certain return for them.
But, assuming all goes smoothly (and that may be a long shot), there’s a chance I will live long enough to see a human being take their first steps on another planet.
Now that, for me, is something to live for.