When Apollo 8 circled the Moon in 1968, it was a big deal, as it is this time with Artemis. Sending humans that far out into space is an incredible achievement, the sort of event that captures the world’s attention. 

At least it does now that we can do it. Before it was possible, a trip like that was kind of a yawner.  

The crew of the 1966 Starship Enterprise wouldn’t have wasted a Photon Torpedo on an uninhabited chunk of rock so boringly close to home. In that same year that “Star Trek” was first stumbling onto one occupied planet after another in distant galaxies, Robert Heinlein published a novel in which the Moon was handy enough to serve as a prison colony. Getting there would be as difficult and exciting as a bus ride. 

By the time Heinlein and Capt. Kirk came onto the scene, writers had already spent a lot of time pondering that nearest big thing in the sky. It could still tickle the imagination in the earlier 1950s. Commando Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe, did some good work up there on Saturday morning TV, fighting the Radar Men from the Moon. And 1953’s “Catwomen of the Moon” opened the eyes of a lot of young Earthmen by dressing the shapely title characters in black unitards.  

The Catwomen were the remnants of a 2-million-year-civilization, surviving in a cave with a couple of giant moon spiders and apparently some personal trainers, dieticians, and an endless supply of hairspray and cosmetics.  

Somehow, even in the gullible Eisenhower Era, stories like this got hard to sell. Maybe it was the fact that anybody with a good set of binoculars could see that the place was not covered in 500-acre spiderwebs or crawling with Radar Men.  

Then again, Americans of that day may have lost interest when they learned it would be impossible to light a cigarette up there.  

For whatever reason, the imagination moved on. By the late ‘50s and early ‘60s the dream of going to the Moon had been left in the rearview mirror of science fiction, with stories generally focusing on Mars and beyond – way beyond.  

To get there we needed hyper-drives and Warp speeds on starships the size of large office buildings, complete with sliding doors, roomy corridors and lots of people in bellhop uniforms walking back and forth, or sitting and monitoring control panels.  

Somebody has to be ready to initiate the Cloaking Shield or turn on the Tractor Beam – often a dishy babe dressed much like a Catwoman of the Moon, except in shinier material. Apparently, the average starship also has a Hair Salon and a boutique. 

And they never have to stop for groceries. How does that work? 

Oh well, it doesn’t have to be believable, just imaginable. That’s why the space between our ears, unlike the real thing, is full of Death Stars, warlords, malicious microbes, galactic Battlestars, and valiant figures like Warrant Officer Ripley, a woman who had to singlehandedly do battle with icky aliens who like to explode out of human stomachs.  

Unfortunately, these flights of fantasy might make it tempting to underestimate the true heroics of space travel. Reality can’t compete – or can it? 

How’s this for a story line of a heroic battle with ickiness? Christina Koch just traveled half a million miles crammed into a glorified flying fuse box with three men and a faulty toilet.  

You probably won’t ever see that story told on the large screen because, as a line from another movie told us, “You can’t handle the truth.”