The American Space Program's greatest project -

Mankind enters inner space

(Not the ocean, but a return to the womb!).


The technological requirements were enormous -

Shrinking a man to the size of an embryo,

The craft's nearly disastrous liftoff

(thruster malfunction in the fallopian tubes),

And the 'splash down' by caesarean

(Some said all those billions should have been spent on needy children).


But who can forget those first incredible pictures?

An astronaut's initial tentative womb-walk,

Afraid to venture too far from the CM,

For a moment a frightened child with lifeline clutched close like a favourite toy

(Boldly going where everyone has gone before),

Seeing it all from behind a helmet’s window-

A foreign body adrift in a strangely familiar world.

Yes, who can forget the wonder of that living, liquid cosmos, where new worlds have their birth

(Silent but for the primal throb that speaks a language we have forgotten).


Now there are those that say

Our future lies not in the stars,

But in

inner space.