Left Hook: To infinity, and beyond? Let's go!

Bruce Bisset

There's nothing quite like the idea of zipping through space, visiting other planets and discovering wonders, that makes a young boy's heart skip a beat. Or an old man's, for that matter.

Space is the ultimate never-ending frontier, the truly great unknown, which to date humans have made but a few faltering and none-too-far flights out into.

But far enough, and with learnings enough, to know our chance of making colonies in space or eventually crossing the void to other stars is still remote; we will require marvellous technologies not yet dreamt of to enable us to claim the heavens.

We still dream. You only need look up, on a cloudless night, to see a slice of the immensity of the universe and feel the distant tug of those myriad other suns pulling at your imagination.

It's a tug that has pulled at me for as long as I can remember.

I was only a toddler when the first Sputnik flew, but still I recall my family out in the house-paddock watching in awe as a small bright dot moved sedately across the sky; something of man had finally ascended beyond the atmosphere.

Then came the space-race, complete with wall charts and cut-out cardboard models and all sorts of thrilling tales of what this side or that had done or heroically failed to do.

The first man in space! The first woman! The first space-walk!

And then, of course, the first men on the moon.

Listening enthralled to the live Nasa-relayed broadcast over the intercom at school as Neil Armstrong stepped down from the lunar lander and made his famous "one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind" declaration.

The sky, it seemed then, was no longer a limit.

How anyone now – especially those who grew through it – can attempt to deny those incredible feats is beyond me.

Yet it's true that, since 1972, despite sending craft to every other planet and even beyond our solar system, humans have not ventured back to the moon, let alone gone further.

Sure, we have the space station, and now private firms even in places like New Zealand sending up rockets. But we're still stuck here.

So when President Trump signed a policy directive on Wednesday for a US-led programme for a human return to the Moon, I cheered.

"This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and beyond."

That's the first thing Trump has said that I'm fully in agreement with.

Because, let's face it, we've pretty much trashed Earth. If we don't find ways, soon, to go out and survive elsewhere, the race's future is uncertain at best.

Serendipitous perhaps that less than a month ago astronomers noted the presence of an odd cigar-shaped object that had just passed through the Earth's orbit, and which has now been confirmed as the first known interstellar visitor – coming from some other solar system.

Indeed, some scientists are hopeful it may even be proven an alien artefact; its anomalous shape (most asteroids are predominantly globular) and dense inert makeup (it sheds no detectable dust or gases) have lent credence to this possibility.

And while the team intently listening for any emissions the object may be making may not find that proof, its existence, coupled with the new American aims, could spark a resurgence of interest in space – and inspire the next brood of astronauts.

It's been named Oumuamua - Hawaiian for "a messenger from afar arriving first". A name an alien tongue may one day label the first spaceship from Earth.

• Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
• Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.