posted 08-13-2008 04:13 PM               

NASA, born 50 years ago at the height of the cold war, was charged with a preposterous mission: "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," in the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, "before the decade is out." What followed was an unprecedented burst of discovery that seemed poised to fuel missions far beyond the lunar landings of the late 1960s and early '70s.

High in the firmament of shining stars who were America's astronaut heroes is Jim Lovell, now 80. Tom Hanks memorably played the former mission commander in the movie Apollo 13 ("Houston, we have a problem"). And earlier, Lovell himself had a role in David Bowie's cult classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth. ("The movie was kind of bad," recalls Lovell. "We all slid down in our seats.")

After the moon landing, NASA seemed to lower its sights, settling into the space shuttle and international space station programs, which, for all their technical wizardry, have never gotten humans out of low Earth orbit again.

But things are looking up. NASA is now planning to return to the moon by 2020, with the goal of building a launching pad to send humans to Mars. It's ambitious (and, in tight budgetary times, perhaps outlandish)--but Lovell has seen the ambitious, and the outlandish, accomplished before. He spoke with us about past disappointments and dreams for the future.

Tahir