With the proliferation of private spacefaring companies and the renewed interest in manned space exploration by the U.S. government, it seems that the moon might be coming back within reach for America.

The last men to walk on the moon left there Dec. 14, 1972, when Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt launched the Challenger lunar module’s ascent stage toward the America command module, in which pilot Ronald Evans was orbiting and awaiting their return.

Since that day, man has never again left low Earth orbit.

But if the children who visited the North Suffolk Library on Thursday are any indication, the imagination and the passion needed to venture to the moon and beyond are still alive in the minds of youngsters right here in Tidewater.

The library hosted an interactive moon colony program in which children of mostly elementary-school age were encouraged to imagine what it would take to settle and live in a moon colony.

“This was an interesting choice, because we have a lot of interest in STEM programming here at the library, and we wanted to give a chance for them to look at what might be a real life situation in the future,” library outreach and program services manager Megan Mulvey said.

The participants worked with an educator from the Virginia Air and Space Center to consider what would be a moon colony’s needs when it comes to food, water, air and electricity.

But they looked beyond the basics to how those colonists might enjoy recreation, how they could stay in shape and what they might do to pass the time away from Earth.

And then they turned their imaginations loose on toolboxes full of building supplies — Legos, Dixie cups, plastic bottles, circuit boards and the like — to make tangible examples of the things their minds had created.

One youngster even recognized that wherever there are people, there are likely to be people getting into trouble. His suggestion: Batman.

Programs like this one will very likely be the kinds of things that do, indeed, help send us back to the moon. The children who today are dreaming about putting Batman on the moon have great-grandparents who once dreamed of flying with Buck Rogers. And that Buck Rogers generation did something magnificent and unexpected with the Apollo space program.

Perhaps it really can happen again.