Once in a blue moon (usually in June), we are reminded that mere mortals learned to take aim at the sky and fling a small metal capsule at the heavens. So brave were the souls and so precise was the flinging, that three and a half days and a quarter-million miles later, two specks of our human tribe stuck an American flag into the lunar dust. They returned home to tell about it. Our world was gobsmacked. People still talk about the Apollo space missions like they just happened. Though after forty years, the voices are fewer and the shiny astonishment is dulled from the unprecedented discovery and exploding technological innovation that has rocketed us clear of the 20th century.

That slick new cell phone you bought last year for ninety bucks? It’s a thousand times more powerful than the computer that guided Apollo 11 through the celestial ether and to their landing on the southwestern corner of the lunar plain. Godspeed to Generation Z. Like Jim Lovell covering it with his thumb, our technology has eclipsed the moon. If you need a less subtle reminder than iPhones, instant messaging and Second Life provide, fire up an Xbox 360 for a virtual date with Lara Croft. Spend an afternoon on X-plane flying your own space shuttle through accurately modeled Martian atmospheres. Watch a three-year-old child effortlessly navigate through a hundred different online educational games, and see for yourself on Google Earth why we are so over the moon. For our digital natives, it’s clear – we have come so far in our technological progress since 1969, that the moon is now actually obsolete. I guess it’s time to stop moonlighting and start calling the moon dogs home. We should slake our appetites with one last gigantic moon-pie. Cancel the honeymoons, park our Mooneys and bid a final farewell to the Man in the Moon.

Okay, the moon should keep doing that thing with the tides, because analog surfing on an actual ocean wave is still as much fun as the Internet. But let’s fill up the Mason jars and get on the NextGen bus. We’ll sip a little moonshine and croon, while we’re mooning the moon. Now that Hubble’s got its science goggles fixed, let’s wax on, while the moon wanes. More interesting things are going on in the galaxy. Pluto was just demoted to dwarf, so our solar system needs another planet. There is that new gaping hole in Jupiter to wonder about. Our technology shrinks this world a little more each year, so why not point our gaze at some distant star? The International Space Station needs some rehab and new inhabitants. And even our aging heroes – the steely-eyed missile men of Apollo – are cautiously beginning to acknowledge, that just maybe, they won’t be the only members of the Extraterrestrials Club. So let’s load up some MP3s for a roadtrip to Roswell. But when we are done looking for ET there, I think I’ll head northwest another thousand miles to the Inyo National Forest, park along Route 168, and start hiking. I need to clear my head. All this thinking about outer space makes me pine for something a little closer to the Earth. And here, at about ten thousand feet up, in a secret location on the side of one of California’s White Mountains, is a Bristlecone Pine named Methuselah.Bathed in harsh ultraviolet light and protected from tourists, its roots sink wide and deep into an inhospitable rocky soil where a seed fell and started to grow 4,841 years ago. That this tree could still be living on Earth? Lunacy. Smart people have said it’s just not possible. Yet, here Methuselah stands – alive and well in a grove among its relic relatives. Many of these ancient time travelers were already 600 years young as the prehistoric lintels of Stonehenge were being laid.

So? Maybe at 40 years, the moon missions are not really that ancient after all. (This makes me feel better.) It makes me think it might even be time again to shine up our astonishment. Concede, perhaps to this century that the moon era technology is antediluvian, but the actual accomplishments were, and forever will remain, magnificently stellar. Still not sure? After a multiplayer, online-combat session in your favorite flight sim, perhaps you’ll like to try to fly a real spacecraft to another real world with only two kilobytes of RAM in your guidance computer? Just remember to pack an extra pair of actual space-pants for when they light that liquid hydrogen. In fact, it’s not so much that our technology has eclipsed the moon as much as it came from it – and our inspired efforts to get there. Thanks to the rocket men of NASA and to new companies spinning off space mission technology. We are flying aircraft this month to Reno with in-flight weather painted on our GPS navigation screens. Civilian helicopters and UAVs now sport low-cost, lightweight stability augmentation systems. Catalyzing development of today’s zero-emission, lithium-powered electric vehicles are the kernels of knowledge gained from building batteries for early satellites.

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