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Alex, thanks for the jog trip down memory lane.
Fifty years ago I was ten, Neil was one year away from stepping on the moon, and my dad had a subscription to National Geographic. I was reading about Apollo 8's journey around the moon with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. (December 1968). I saw their earthrise image and could only dream of being there and being a part of it all.
I was way ahead of my mates at school thanks to those Nat.Geos. I had this tiny window every month to see out into the world of NASA, and it was like a dream - a wonderland. They were making the machines of the future, things that could not be dreamed of in the world I lived in.
My daughter cannot understand how information-poor we were. How much we did not know. How little we could find out. How long it took to learn anything. How easy it was to learn out-of-date stuff because Encyclopaedia Britannica had an article from 1930 as "the latest stuff".
Now we can learn as fast as we want, and in fact our biggest challenge is to sort out tripe from real facts. We have more connection with the rest of the world than ever before; we watch the Ryugu mission in pretty near real-time. It's great to be a part of it.
I appreciate the dirt bike world, though I was never a part of it. I spent my time dreaming of space, but had to settle for being a sparky. Now I have a telescope and can look out at the solar system, and I still dream.
Regards,
Tony Barry
WSAAG
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