Grappa may be the only salvation of humanity. That's just an observation that makes some odd sense after watching Apollo 13 for the tenth time. I mean, I started out wanting to be an astronaut, when I was about nine. A pre-pubescent insight into Australia's space programme led me away from this by the time I entered high school, so I wanted to become an astronomer. Ah, but what was it, deep in my soul, that I always wanted? What was the siren call that plagued my bones? I wanted to go into space.

Yeah, right, you Gen-Xers who raise an eyebrow. Talk to me of Richard Bransome. Talk to me of all the wonderful research that's being done. Tell me it will happen. Cheap space flight. Only a billion bucks a hit. And can I pass the medical?

They promised me, they promised me, they promised me, when I was young. Hey, Harriman, when did you sell the moon, and who to? All the writers who said that it would happen, real soon now. Not yet.

If there is one thing for which Richard Nixon should be tied to a slow spit in hell for, it's what he did to the space programme. That long-nosed, narrow-minded criminal couldn't stand the fact that NASA, set up by Kennedy, had done what Kennedy wanted. Kennedy said, the moon in ten years. NASA got there. Oh, the cosmic bile that created in the pit of Nixon's petty gut. But he was king, so he cut the funding. He cut the missions. We could have been on the moon thirty years ago, we could have been half-way to the stars, but we stumbled over the fuckwit policy hurdles of a grubby Republican.

Lesley Fish wrote a song, Hope Irae, about the lunar landing. The chorus goes:
"The Eagle has landed
Tell your children when
Time won't drag us down to dust again."

There was so much hope when that happened. What price hope? What price the stars?

My sadness is that I will never ride that rocket, never walk on any but the Earth.

But maybe you can.