Rebooting moon travel: It has been 50 years since Neil Armstrong made exploration history with that first of many boot-prints on the Moon and since 1972, when the last of the 12 Moonwalkers left the surface of our nearest planetary body no-one has returned. Is it time to put those lunar boots back on?

ONE DICTIONARY DEFINITION of exploration is “an organised trip into unfamiliar regions, especially for scientific purposes”. The exploration of space certainly fits the definition in terms of unfamiliar regions, but the ‘trip’ is often made by automated, rather than manned, vehicles for cost and safety reasons. To many in the space fraternity this is half-hearted exploration, because it lacks the essential essence of exploration as an intrinsic human activity; although it references a science-fiction cliché, they would prefer “to boldly go where no-one has gone before”.