I do not have any children of my own, and the chances of me generating any are about the same as the human race developing a faster-than-light starship drive in my lifetime. That fact that I chose not to procreate doesn’t mean I don’t care about the younger generation.

When I was about six years old, a jolly and friendly geologist, built like a bull and named Wally Robbins, took me under his wing during one of our family vacations to the US. He gave me my first trilobite fossil (I went on to find some spectacular specimens in later life, but I still have that first little Elrathia kingii and still treasure it) and some lovely rocks and minerals. I watched him walk the beaches and rivers of New England at low tide, collecting rocks. His wife joked that the only exercise he ever got was when he bent down to pick up something of geological interest.

Were it not for Wally, I may never have followed my path into the world of scientific adventure and exploration. I remember how inspiring he was to me and—in my own small way—I try to pass it along.

Yesterday, I had the very great honor of participating in the Lunar and Planetary Lab‘s Apollo 11 40th Anniversary celebration. My staff and I set up a display of rare and unusual meteorites, as did several of our professional colleagues. I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting astronomer Thomas Bopp, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp “the most widely observed comet of the twentieth century.” I also got to spend time with John Terry White, an aerospace expert and president of White Eagle Aerospace, and a most charming and fascinating man. Scott Schneewels astounded me with his collection of genuine Apollo mission historic artifacts, including a control panel from an actual Lunar Module, hand-woven memory from one of the command modules, and tools designed to collect and transport moon rocks.

I was afraid that all of this “science stuff” might be a little dry for the scores of kids who were in attendance, and who were born more than thirty years after the Eagle touched down at Tranquility Base. There was no chance of that. We gave away small meteorites with identification cards, all day long, to wide-eyed children who were enthralled to hold something from outer space. And we distributed free DVDs, magazines, and postcards about meteorites and answered a million questions: “How does the Earth know there isn’t life on other planets?” (Well, that was a tough one)

If one of those kids decides to devote his or her life to aerospace, or meteoritics, or some other important scientific discipline, then we really are leaving something worthwhile behind. With budget cuts in research and education resulting in tragedies like the wonderful Flandrau Planetarium remaining closed for five days out of every seven, those of us who care about the future must take up the slack in other ways.

Photographs by Leigh Anne DelRay, Callisto Images © Leigh Anne DelRay, all rights reserved.

This coming Saturday, July 18, a host of astronomers, NASA engineers, and space program specialists and enthusiasts will convene in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building on the U of A campus to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The event is organized by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), an outfit that was intimately involved with the planning and execution of the Apollo missions.

Activities include lectures, films about the Moon and the Apollo program, displays of telescopes, meteorites, moon rocks, and space program memorabilia. There will also be kids’ activities, question-and-answer sessions with senior researchers, planetarium tours and night sky viewing with telescopes (weather permitting).

My science company, Aerolite Meteorites, was kindly invited by LPL to participate in the event, and we will be bringing a spectacular display of genuine meteorites, along with photos, slideshows of our expeditions, and information about our work in recovering and studying rocks from space. Most of the specimens on display are from the Aerolite Meteorites private reference collection and have never been seen in public before.

The event is free and open to the public. Location: Kuiper Space Sciences Building, Rooms 308, 312, 330, and the atrium. Times: 2 to 8 pm, Saturday, July 18, 2009.

For more information about the Apollo 11 anniversary visit the LPL calendar

In just three short summer weeks’ time it will be forty years since the Apollo 11 lunar module rocked the world with that one brief and startling transmission: “Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

To say I am a space program nut is like saying polar bears enjoy snow. In 1969, when I was a wee lad, I coerced my long-suffering parents into writing notes to the doddering, gin-soaked headmaster of my brutal English school, announcing that I would be staying at home to watch the lunar landings. All of them. To my eternal gratitude, my mother and father realized that two men landing a tiny spaceship on the surface of our nearest celestial neighbor was a feat of such enduring consequence that it made school temporarily irrelevant (to me: entirely irrelevant).

Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the first humans who set foot on another world, but let’s not forget command module pilot Mike Collins who orbited the Moon in solitude while his buddies were making those famous first footprints. Collins went on to be an author, director of the National Air and Space Museum, and a great proponent of an ongoing vigorous American space program. His autobiography Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys is well worth a read.

I often wonder where we would be—literally—if we had continued space exploration with the same energy and dedication that President Kennedy inspired back in the early 1960s. So very much was achieved in such a short period of time: entirely new technologies devised and extraordinary devices conceived and constructed. Much of the equipment required for the Apollo missions simply did not exist and had to be invented. If the Apollo command and service modules made it to the Moon and back using a computer with a memory capacity of 72K, imagine what we could do with today’s technology, if such a thing was made a real priority.

Opponents of the space program complain that the money could have been better spent elsewhere, but they ignore the myriad advances and discoveries that led to all kinds of developments enjoyed today by the entire world. Not to mention the thousands of engineers and designers who were employed and—most importantly—the fact that humans journeyed out there, to the Moon, on the greatest adventure of all time.

For those of you who, like me, think back to the Apollo missions as one of the landmark achievements of the human race, make your own  journey through time and space to Tucson’s Lunar and Planetary Lab special event at the Kuiper Space Sciences Building on Saturday, July 18, when like-minded people—including noted scientists and Apollo engineers—will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Eagle gently coming to rest on the lunar surface. Admission is free and there will also be lectures and films, along with displays of  Moon rocks, meteorites, and Apollo memorabilia. I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China.