"When I was a boy, I dreamed of flying airplanes and I built models from balsa wood," says artist Alan Bean. "By the time I was in high school, model airplanes of all shapes and sizes were hanging by thin wires from the ceiling of my room. Airplanes were the last things I would see before falling asleep at night. I dreamed of flying higher than the highest cloud and faster than the fastest wind. As I grew older, the dream grew stronger. It followed me as I completed flight training, became a jet pilot flying off aircraft carriers and when, as a test pilot and then as an astronaut, I trained to rocket to the Moon. And in my painting, as I look out over the ‘magnificent desolation' of the lunar surface, youngsters on Earth are building model rockets, dreaming of flying higher than the Moon and faster than a shooting star."