Kennedy's famous words during his declaration of the "Space Race" continue to flow through the hearts and minds of all who envision man's journey into the heavens. I have practically lived my whole life by these words as I have taken the many challenges during my education and work.

Although I have only watched the first four episodes of the HBO mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon", I have already been captivated by the risks, challenges and sacrfices that NASA had to face in order to accomplish one of mankind's greatest achievements.

Whilst the crew of Apollo XI, not surprisingly, continue to remain the most well known, a lot of my recent interest has laid with Apollo VIII, the first humans ever to leave the confines of Earth orbit and travel into the darkness of Space. What must have been going through their hearts and minds when they witnessed the first "Earth-rise" by a human being? This was something special, many great explorers had witnessed great wonders over the centuries on Earth and this was no different.

One part of the mission that I always recall was the crew's Christmas message during their lunar orbit, where they read the opening extracts from the Book of Genesis, a fitting description of what one of the crew members described as "a green oasis in the desolate vastness of Space". Their transmission remains to this day the most watched transmission in history with approximately a quarter of the human population having watched it. Pope Paul VI, who met Mission Commander Frank Borman afterwards, told him with regards to their reading of Genesis: "I have spent my entire life trying to say to the world what you did on Christmas Eve".

With eight more episodes to go, I look forward to delving deeper into the lives of these brave pioneers, and with the Orion Programme on the horizon, I can only hope that we as a people will return to what our predecessors once began.

For the Dream is alive in all of us, we just have to be willing to make it reality.