40 Years On...Where's My Flying Car??!!

Written in a child's hand inside the cover of a pocket-sized New Testament, given to me by the Gideons on July 20 1969, is an inscription to remind me forever that it was the day Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind onto the moon.
Over the previous months I'd been swept along by the mission build-up, clipping glossy pictures out of the Weekly News centre lift-out, and displaying them as an ongoing project on the classroom wall.
I still recall watching that first fuzzy-looking step on our family's first television, bought by Dad especially for the event. Down here on Terra Firma, we had no knowledge of how close the entire operation came to a disastrous end...we just watched in awe!
It's sad that after all the effort, all the cost (in lives as well as dollars), there is still a vocal few claiming it was a big conspiracy, and no amount of proof or debate will silence these. Then there's the often-raised question of the actual value of the space programme: a recent article in the Canadian Press looked at this very issue.
All I know is that, for a lad who'd been raised in the exciting Space Race years - with unfulfilled promises of flying Jetsons cars awaiting me in adulthood - this was the next best thing...