To infinity and beyond...

Diamond Geezer has written a piece celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sputnik and how exciting the space race was back then.

Back in the sixties as a child everything seemed possible, even the most ludicrous of suggestions. By now we should be just popping protein pills rather than eating food and I'm still waiting for my personal flying saucer!

So, okay, reality hasn't exactly measured up to the dream but it served a purpose. We were all forward thinking. Our horizons expanded way beyond Earths limitations. Many scientists today probably got inspired by the possibilities of our future and certainly as kids the whole thing was exciting and who on earth didn't want to be an astronaut, assuming there were no train driving jobs left?

So our generation was inspired to look outwards to a magical future full of exciting technologies and strange planets. What does the youth have today? Where is the forward thjinking to come from. If the media and doom sayers are to be believed, thanks to global warming, it must be destruction. Would a new era of space travel inspire them as it did us? Probably not. Would they find the possibility of finding a little green man on mars as exciting as the strange synthetic worlds they can inhabit on their computers?

Okay, I'm 50 now, but in the words of a theme tune back then,

I wish I was a spaceman
The fastest guy alive,
I'd fly around the universe,
in Fireball XL5

And I still would.