My love of all things space began at a young age, and my first dream career was to be an astronaut.  But my fear of flying would have hindered that a bit, so I'm glad I eventually began imitating Nashville radio dj's on my brother's tape player.  However, I decorated my room with images of the total solar eclipse of 1981 with an idea that those walls doubled as NASA Control.  Or maybe it was more like the command module of an Apollo rocket, since when I lay down on my single bed I could simply turn my head to see the dramatic newspaper clippings.  That's about the time the aching of my legs kept me up at night in tears, and to see those images - of the moon slowly moving in phases between the Earth and sun - helped focus my mind on something other than being elongated in torture like my Stretch Armstrong.

Forty years after the words "The Eagle Has Landed" were uttered I was glued to the tv, watching all the history programs outlining the Apollo missions.  I wasn't born during Armstrong (Neil, not Stretch) and Aldrin's historical trek, but found myself jealous of the wonder of that night.  The world gathered to watch what it thought was the beginning of a lifetime of progress.   But recent interviews with these gray heroes proved that not to be true since each one included a plea in their recollections for more funding of the space program.   I also noticed a public perception that space exploration is no longer a priority.

Or is it simply that we take the wonder for granted and focus on the negative? For instance, the space shuttle Endeavour is currently docked at the International Space Station.  Thirteen people are housed together there, the most ever in space at one time, and the most-reported fact of the mission was that the bathroom on the ISS was broken.  We don't look to the skies and dream, we look up and laugh.  Are we that spoiled?  Or harder to impress?