I was a child of the space race in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I graduated from high school just after the Beatles arrived in the US and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember thinking Ringo looked pretty funny with his bangs and long hair. JFK had been murdered the year before and now that the light-hearted mood had died, the meat years of the 60’s were attempting to get a firm grip. Soon we’d walk on the moon. Not I, alas, but Neil would do the two step for me in '69. Little did I know then that my hair would soon grow longer than Ringo’s. Yes, we were some of the most conforming “non-conformists”, you know; iron-on patches clinging to perfectly good jeans and the idea than only those who had long hair could be cool. When John Lennon cut his hair short some of us learned it wasn’t hair length that made you cool. It was Sergeant Pepper.

I thought for sure I’d be in orbit by now, perhaps even on a trip to the moon, if I was lucky. However, the only orbit I've seen was experimental in the late 60's, chemically induced as recreational. Far out. Not knocking it so much, mind you, I'd just wanted the real thing - so I can exclaim, as Jody Foster did in the movie CONTACT, "I had no idea".

Well now ideas are cheap and I keep telling myself I'm here from the future. Yes. Misplaced my Time Machine. I can't get back so the Natives are looking more attractive. But I know it's a lie I tell myself cause I can easily remember my mother pointing out to me, about the time I wore that bow tie, that I had been born atop a hill in Portland, what they now call OHSU.

The internet came and space just kinda hung there. The 60’s were followed by Carol King and Tapestry, John Denver getting us high with Rocky Mountains, and Roots helped us explore our own ancestry, not to mention our relationship with one another.

Soon Jimmy Carter took over after Nixon resigned and an actor became president. Wow. Those Natives! And if you think that was exciting, (I told myself back then) just wait until the election of 2000 and the year following. And I don’t mean 2001: A Space Odyssey but 911.

So, here we are looking back at what seemed a distant future in 1968 when Space Odyssey hit the big screens.

It didn’t happen the way I imagined, or hoped. Space travel all but evaporated. Oh yes, we sent unmanned flights to the ends of our solar system. That was neat. But I wasn't there, or no one like me. And yes, comets hit Jupiter in July of 1994, and there were the Mars encounters, landings, and the Hubble Space Telescope. But friends, we’re a long way from setting foot on Mars.

Humans are big on anniversaries. Nice round numbers just somehow click with us, seem worthy of special admiration and reverence. For me, anniversaries are a good time to look back on what we've learned and how we've changed through the years. Ringo and Paul don’t look that much different but Britney Spears sure does.

I don’t know what that means but thought I’d toss it in for something to think about. For a couple seconds.

Back in the good ‘ol days, circa 1957, I had turned eleven. There was no end to anything. It was all exciting, big, fresh and with that sense of wonder like seeing an older girl naked for the first time. A true sense of wonder anf for sure a Heavenly body.

In October 1957, a 184-pound sphere was shot into orbit by what was then the Soviet Union. There were no scientific instruments on board, no cameras, no monkeys, nothing we would equate with a modern satellite. Four years later, the history making event prompted JFK to propose what he called the "most hazardous, dangerous and greatest adventure upon which Man has ever embarked." And I’m not talking about spam in the internet.

On a summer's night in 1969, while I held a 92 year old woman's hand trying to get her TV to work so she wouldn't miss the moon landing, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon in the Sea of Tranquility. I got the TV fixed and we both cried with joy. We've made that journey six times but the last journey was 35 years ago. After Apollo came the yawn of Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, then the Shuttle and International Space Station programs.

We've sent Voyager, Viking, Mariner and Pioneer billions of miles away. But now the public has been overtaken by apathy, uncaring about what lies just over the horizon, around the next bend, looking forward only to the next season premiere of 24 or American Idol. Or watching the stock market.

Capitol Hill and NASA are debating what happens next. But it's clear to me we need another Sputnik, a real honest kick in the pants to fire our patriotic imagination once again. More than rocket fuel, the drive for us to discover the universe, together, is what powers space exploration, and we need that now more than ever.