Blog 3755 – 02.21.2026

“To The Moon, Alice”

Jackie Gleason famously uttered the line playing frustrated hubby Ralph Kramden in the mid-fifties sitcom The Honeymooners. Half a decade later, President John F. Kennedy would announce the audacious goal of putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely home by the end of the nineteen sixties. NSA accomplished that goal and 1972 was the last time men walked on the moon.

If all goes well, in a couple of weeks NASA will launch an Artemis Two rocket with astronauts to circle the moon again in preparation for a new lunar landing in the near future.

I remember being a boy in the early sixties and watching all the launches from Cape Canaveral and dreaming of being an astronaut someday. Those ambitions have colored my thoughts all these years. It grows evermore unlikely that I will not get to venture into space at least this go round. But, my two and a half year old granddaughter might. Her generation may see us establish a base on the moon for further exploration of “space the final frontier” and we may indeed make the Star Trek prophetic visions of Gene Roddenberry science fact instead of just science fiction.

Instead of “To the moon, Alice” perhaps it is time we set the higher goal of Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear, “To Infinity and Beyond.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White