A Moon landing event for a new generation

In just a few hours from now, at 3:56 BST to be precise, it will be exactly 40 years since Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon.

It was a truly wondrous moment that is now etched in history.

This greatest achievement of mankind came courtesy of Mr Armstrong with his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin, who was second on the Moon, and Michael Collins, who remained in the Apollo 11 craft.

Back on earth, it was a brilliant piece of living history followed by 450 million people out of a total world population of 3.6 billion.

In fact, many of those people - especially Americans - had been following the mission well before it launched.

They had been promised that man would be on the Moon "before this decade is out" back in May 1961 by President John F Kennedy.

Stung by the Soviet success in April '61 when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, the Americans became obsessed with landing a man on the Moon.

But it was a good obsession and the rivalry with the Soviets in the space race, at the height of Cold War troubles, was entirely progressive.

Mr Armstrong said today: "It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR.

"I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion.

"Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides."

Mr Armstrong was speaking at a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew but it was Mr Aldrin who came up with the more salient point, in my opinion.

"The best way to honour and remember all those who were part of the Apollo programme is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration," he said.

Since the lunar landings, and despite huge amounts of investment in NASA, there has been no earth-shattering, jaw-dropping, 'wow' event for this generation.

Politically, of course, there is far less of an onus.

But it would undoubtedly be a much more attractive proposition to see another space race, say between the United States and budding fellow superpower China, to land the first man or woman on Mars.

Much more attractive, for instance, than stockpiling nuclear arms.

I'm not the only one frustrated by the lack of progress. Eugene Cernan, who was the last man to leave the Moon in 1972, said: "My glass has been half empty for three decades at least.

"Hopefully, we can turn that around because what we did then is do-able again."

It may cost a lot of money in these troublesome times but billions of dollars are going to be spent either way.

And even if the program span wildly out of budget, as these things tend do, it would still be worth continuing.

After all, in decades to come, it would probably be seen as a progressive investment.

It's about time we had another historical event in space - another giant leap for mankind - to celebrate.

*For the BBC story on which this blog post was based, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8158519.stm