The space age isn’t over. It hasn’t yet begun

The evening is laid out above the houses, behind Mr X’s head. Pinkish clouds collide then slide apart, exposing jigsaw shapes of darkening sky. A thumb smudge of moon appears over Westminster as Mr X gets to the point: ‘A new space age is about to begin,’ he says. ‘The question is not “will it happen?” — it will. The question is whether we want to be part of it.’ The light fades. The shadows on Mr X’s face deepen and his mood swings between elation and resignation. Mr X is a brilliant rocket scientist, excited about the dawning of a new era. But he also knows that there’s only a brief window of opportunity for us to get involved. ‘It’ll soon be too late,’ he says sadly. But we all love the moon landings, I say. Look at all the fuss about the anniversary of Apollo 11 (the Eagle touched down exactly 40 years ago this Saturday). Mr X gives a tired half-smile. ‘Apollo 11 has a lot to answer for,’ he says.

What he means, I later learn, is that if we believed all the hype surrounding July 1969, it’s not surprising that we’ve become a little disillusioned with the idea of manned expeditions into space. Apollo 11 was supposed to mark the start of a new era of discovery pioneered by Armstrong, our orbital Columbus. By 2009 we assumed we would be sipping tea in space cafés by the Sea of Serenity, gawping at photos of Lindsay Lohan in Lunar Vogue, getting wrecked in zero gravity. But with each appalling shuttle disaster, the public lost a little more of its faith, and by the late 1990s, especially after the end of the cold war, a curious notion had begun to spread that the cosmos was somehow a bit dated, old hat.