Forty years ago the citizens of this planet watched the flickering images on their black and white television sets as Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.
Now there are plans to go further - perhaps to Mars and the establishment of our first space colony.
That past era also had many people wondering if we were alone in the cosmos. It was a time when lights in the sky and flying discs coined the " Flying Saucer " age.
We don't hear much about them now, but at the time there seemed a real prospect of one landing - and little green men emerging. Our imagination ran riot and it spawned a plethora of science fiction books and movies - which fired our fascination with space and the mystery of other worlds.
Many people made a connection between supposed visitors from space and the start of the atomic age just fourteen years before. There was conjecture that nuclear explosions had got the attention of our neighbours - and those flying saucers were more advanced civilizations checking us out.
There was panic amongst this world's religions. The prospect of an alien landing would surely throw their teachings into disarray - and we were treated to a sharp change of tack to encompass a wider view and bring a wider world under the religious umbrella.
Some question spending the huge amount of money involved in space exploration, but then we do have an emerging problem of just too many people on this planet. We are fast approaching seven billion - and there are valid questions about the ability of the food supply to cope.
Maybe the era when an over crowded Europe expanded to the other continents will need a similar migration to other worlds - and maybe that is a natural progression in the development of mankind.
And maybe the day may come when those little green guys do actually land - and complain that we are polluting the cosmos.
Another case of - " There goes the neighbourhood ! "
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