The1969 moon landing was quite possibly the coolest thing anyone has done; ever.
Never mind the element of competition with the Russians that drove its haste, a motivation that somewhat soiled the dream.
Never mind the vast amounts of money spent - money that could have ameliorated the suffering of the countless numbers of the world's less fortunate - landing on the moon was a grand adventure.
Perhaps there was a general sense of optimism still lurking in the minds of the very young back then, but it also seemed to be the start of something, a future where man would lift proudly from the planet and the dazzling promises of science fiction would come true.
A future, in short, that promised to be full of rockets with shiny fins and men in space suits.
Sadly, the future looked a whole lot better in the past.
There can be no argument the future has been an appalling failure, a bitter disappointment and a horrible, unworthy sham that someone, somewhere, should answer for.
But Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Prime, July 26, 8.30pm) at least takes us back to a simpler time, where even astronauts smoked and drank regularly, everyone drove enormous cars and a select few flew through space.
Nobody worried about petrol running out, lung cancer or global warming, which makes you wonder why they had to invent valium.
Their only concern was nuclear annihilation.
July 21 marks 40 years since the great day and celebrates an event that saw Neil Armstrong, Edwin Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins really wear space boots.
Moonshot, a drama-documentary, weaves the story of what happened on the ground and in space with real footage from the time interspersed with a dramatisation of the events.
There is only one slightly queer thing about Moonshot.
It is fairly English, made for ITV, with the writer's credits including Hotel Babylon and the director's, Diana: The Last Days of a Princess.
Andrew Lincoln, who starred in British sitcom Teachers and This Life, a 1990s series about five twenty-something law graduates sharing a house in south London, plays Michael Collins, the guy nobody remembers, who stayed on the space ship while Armstrong and Aldrin nipped down to the moon for a packet of fags and a bag of rocks.
It is just a bit hard watching him doing the slow motion "I'm pretend-ing to be weightless" thing and not expect him to come out with some angsty witticism about life in London.
Fortunately, the space bits, especially the historic footage, still quicken the heart with their tiny window into a great human drama.
The National Bank Country Calendar (TV One, Saturday, July 18, 7pm) this week heads off to the shores of Lake Wanaka to the Rippon Vineyard.
The show looks at Nick Mills' use of a bio-dynamic system that treats the land as a living organism not to be abused.
