I notice that on Google's homepage today there's an image of Sputnik to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of mankind placing satellites in space. We don't seem to have progressed much in those five decades though; twelve years later, in 1969 NASA reached the Moon - but nothing since.
I've always been interested in astronomy and space exploration. As a child I remember collecting cards that you got free with packets of tea. One particular series was concerned with the manned exploration of space and depicted the likely spaceship which would take astronauts to Mars in 1988 - that was a bit optimistic.
On the same subject, a couple of weeks ago I was reading an article which said that the Americans could have funded a mission to Mars eleven times over for the same amount of money as they've spent on the Iraq War. It's all a matter of politics and priorities I suppose: I can just about remember the Apollo Moon landings and would certainly be following very closely any future mission to Mars - it's not likely to happen for decades though.
