When I was little, my brother and I would play in the basement in the dark. The basement was our spaceship. We drew ship controls on paper in markers and crayons and used masking tape to tape them onto work tables in the basement. We'd pretend we were going to far away places, pushing the buttons of our controls to operate our space ship.
I have a memory of receiving my first telescope. We were at my uncle's house and there was snow on the ground. We set it up in the frigid air and looked at the craters in the surface of the full moon. It was awesome.
My grandfather used to teach me constellations that he learned while manning ships in the US Navy. I never learned them as well as I should have, but I looked for them whenever there was enough night to see stars. I knew that if I kept at it, I would get closer to them one day, even if it was on a derelict battleship converted into a spacecraft with a giant energy weapon carving a hole through its center, or perhaps even inside of a spaceship shaped like a lion....
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