The media is abuzz with reminiscences of the first moon walk, 40 years ago. I remember it quite well. My family and grandparents were huddled in the living room in front of the boob toob, watching history being made, as they say.

My grandmother, a Bible Christian, refused to admit that God would permit it; meanwhile my grandfather, who was just as religious, gently teased her that it was going to happen. I remained neutral on this theological controversy. I just thought that the pictures were poor quality.

As a slide-rule-wielding teenage nerd at that time, I was in the demographic that was supposed to be inspired by the space program to become a scientist or engineer, and help America beat the Russians. As propaganda I suppose that the first moon walk of 40 years ago had some value, but not as much as that of the USA hockey team in the 1980 Olympics.

The truth is that I always thought that the space race was a frightful bore, and apparently many other Americans thought the same way. There were massive layoffs of aerospace engineers in the 1970's.

The space race was a big waste of money despite such spinoffs as grape-flavored Tang. It was predicated on the fears of 1957, when the Russkies were first in launching an earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. The movie, "The Right Stuff," does a great job of helping you relive that era. Someone in Prez Denzel's administration recently had his 15 minutes of fame for saying that no good crisis should be allowed to go to waste. That was hardly a new principle of government.

At the time, going to the moon was compared to Columbus discovering the New World. History has shown that to be a poor analogy. Reaching the moon has proven to be about as consequence-free as being the first man to climb Mt. Everest or reach the North Pole.

At least the polar explorers were interesting! They were the last of the true explorers, partly scientific, partly romantic adventurers. Even their failures were magnificent. Especially their failures.

When Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the lunar surface on that day, 40 years ago, he gave a brief speech that the media went ga-ga over. I reheard his words recently and it sounded like he almost forgot the punchline. What do you expect? Presumably it was ghost-written and there was no teleprompter on the moon that day.

The Virginian gentleman, Richard E. Byrd, needed no committee of ghost writers to write eloquently of solitude and fear during an Antarctic winter, in his modern classic "Alone."

Imagine if the first moon landing were today, instead of 40 years ago. What a controversy there would be about famous first words that were so sexist and politically incorrect. 'One small step for man...' indeed! And why wasn't there the obligatory school marm on board, doing crystal-growing experiments?

In fact, today the space race would probably abort before it ever got off the ground: the people for the ethical treatment of animals, PETA, would raise such a stink about using chimpanzees in the early test program. And the Family Values Coalition would object to showing spaceship docking on prime time television.

The government groomed the astronauts to be heroes, but I don't think the public ever really got enthused about them. For the most part, they were dry and inarticulate technicians who were dull compared to the polar explorers of three generations ago. The latter were part gentleman, part scientist, Viking, and publicity hound. Where bland utilitarianism and safety engineering reign today, exploration once meant the pathos of Robert Falcon Scott, writing to his wife as he slowly froze to death on his return trip from reaching the South Pole a couple weeks after his Norwegian rival, Amundsen, got there first. (Actually much of the credit should go to the latter's sacrificial dogs. What do you think PETA would say about that today?)

But I don't want to beat up on the space program too much. Apollo 13 was certainly dramatic, and Ron Howard's movie of that name helps us relive it. My favorite scene in the movie was when the nerds whipped out their slide rules to do a quick calculation and save the day. But even the drama of Apollo 13 was no match for what Ernest Shackleton and his men went through to survive an aborted mission in Antarctica, just before the Great War.

I witnessed the last moonshot in 1972, in person. We had a great view of it, especially because the afternoon launch had been postponed until evening. It was impressive! At the time, just a couple years after the original Star Trek series ended, it never would have occurred to me that I was watching the twilight of manned space exploration, rather than its dawn.