My earliest childhood memory is of my mum taking me into the back garden, pointing up at the moon in the evening sky and saying "there's men up there right now".
I certainly didn't understand what was going on at the time, it made a very strong impression on me that someone would say something so strange. The exploration of space has been a lifelong fascination for me, especially the early astronauts and cosmonauts like Armstrong, Aldrin, Alexei Leonov and Vladimir Komarov whose bravery in embarking on often hazardous and untested missions was undoubtedly the greatest human achievement.
I don't think we'll see a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime. We have a long wait before the world sees anything to match what Neil Armstrong did in 1969.
