It seems more likely than not that new boundaries of space will be explored in my lifetime. When we think about it, it is remarkable how quickly we adapt to norms, how extraordinary is becoming ordinary at the speed of the news cycle.

Is that what 1969 was like? They always say they believed the stars were in our grasp, that their children would live in space stations and on the moon, but we are their children still confined to Earth. The future escapes predictions, but how exciting it is to imagine that we are born just in time for a man and woman to set foot on the Red Planet, on this little dot patiently tracing loops in the sky since long before our first ancestors looked to the sky.