"To The Moon, Alice"

Somewhere inside those dark blotches is a faded mirror we should dust off.

That famous line by the lovable 1950s blue-collar Brooklynite Ralph Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason in the show "The Honeymooners," will forever be part of U.S. television's most quotable quotes. However, the suggestion that a husband would threaten to physically jettison his spouse (Alice) for being argumentative is not going to be written into many sitcom scripts today. Time changes attitudes. And that's also happened to our views toward achieving big things, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard," as President John Kennedy explained to us in 1962.

The idea of something as big as sending humans to The Moon or another planet has metamorphosized from a sky's-the-limit race to beat an enemy, to an expensive wish that political opponents of goverment spending deride as folly, though mostly when it's for things that don't benefit them or their re-elections directly. But ideology aside, the magic of space exploration that inspired generations to seek out the unknown has been muted by a constant fight for funding and justification. Over the decades since (and even during) the Apollo Program, some people have advocated for the cutting of NASA funds because, you know, learning new stuff is too expensive.

The most basic debates about the value of space exploration still devolve into a level of political tribalism that ultimately stalls progress. Sadly, it often takes an "enemy" to get the majority of our population pulling in the same direction. It surely fueled our race to The Moon in the 1960s; so much so that we even employed former enemies to help with the critical rocket technology needed to make it happen. Yet soon after that mission was accomplished, the cowboy mentality waned and the nerdy scientists swapped their western-style hats for thinking caps and quietly went about their business. Maybe that's NASA's secret sauce: Convince the bettors that they've got the winning horse and all the glory that comes with it, get the funds, then replace the jockeys with scientists.

Despite all the financial and political obstacles, NASA has managed to "go there" multiple times. The Voyager Spacecraft, one of which is just leaving our Sun's influence after more than forty years in service still call home every now and then. We have orbiters exploring other planets, even The Sun itself. Mars seems as familiar as a shopping mall down the highway thanks to multiple rovers and other vehicles serving up some incredible images we've been lucky to receive over the decades. The Juno spacecraft dancing around Jupiter even has its own Twitter account. Space exploration has left us far richer than any earthly treasure ever will.

Since the 1980s, the Space Shuttle program was the go-to space lab and scientific workshop after all the fanfare it received during its nascient years. It also survived the side-eyed scrutiny and funding questions after each of the two disasters it suffered. Yet decade after decade, new discoveries were made and new technology helped give us a glimpse into our future as well as our multi-billion-year past. Here's looking at you, Hubble. In case you've forgotten, here's a quick reminder of the kinds of things we wouldn't have today were it not for our space programs.

There's no question that the private sector will lead the future of space exploration. It's an economic reality that makes our dreams of exploration more palatable to an increasingly reluctant body holding the purse strings. But rarely will you find any company willing to take on the entire cost without help from the public, the folks with the funds and needed infrastructure. Just ask defense contractors how that works. The Shuttle program is gone now and new companies are leading the way to keep us starry-eyed about what's possible outside of our blue bubble. But knowing that profit is most certainly a company's greatest motive, we have to be clear-eyed about what's in it for us as humans. We don't have a great record here on Earth when it comes to caring for natural resources, so when I hear about the deep deposits of [insert element or metal here] found on a moon or other cosmic body, I become a bit cynical about the true goals of private space missions. I wonder once again what it would take for nations to break down and allow companies to project huge ads on the largest piece of canvas seen from Earth. I want to be wrong about this.

Whatever you think of the relevance of space exploration today when compared to something far more critical to everyday life, like knowing the most effective way to get "likes" for your selfies or convincing others that vertical video is actually a good thing, you can't deny that the brilliance of mind and sheer will that resulted in humankind's greatest achievement still astounds. But can it be repeated? In short, yes. But an entire population rallying around a common goal, especially in the U.S. these days, is a peacetime rarity.

My hope is that we can capture that feeling of purpose and pride once again to open our eyes and aspirations and unite our efforts to become better, more knowledgeable people without having an enemy to vanquish or a profit motive as the reason. I've said before that what keeps me grounded here on Earth when things seem insurmountable and society unfixable, is knowing that the vastness out there yet to be discovered is far greater than any terrestrial worry, even mortality itself. There's a "foreverness" to the whole thing that makes our time on Earth merely a stopping point – a very teeny-tiny one. And I'm totally OK with that.

You know what will also live on forever? Those footprints set upon on our lone and distant natural satellite, The Moon. It was 50 years ago this month that we punched the skies and sent humans free from gravity to plant their souls (and soles) on another world. We've not done anything as globally unifying since then. We've let ourselves become "yeah, but" instead of "why not?" Yes it's hard to do. That's why we should do it.

Like the various rocket stages falling back down to Earth after each launch, the detractors and naysayers weighing down progress will eventually get jettisoned and fall back to their safe, familiar world while losing their grasp on forward momentum ... and the future.