Bob Richards remembers watching the gray, ghostly figures bounce across his family’s black-and-white TV screen nearly a half-century ago: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first humans walking on the moon.

Enthralled by the success of Apollo 11, which touched down 49 years ago on July 20, and by the future portrayed in pop culture by “Star Trek” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Richards was certain that routine flights to the moon and space stations were inevitable within a few decades.

It never happened: The United States canceled its big-budget moon program just a few years after an epic Space Race victory over Russia, and astronauts haven’t left orbits near Earth since.

But Richards, the CEO of Cape Canaveral-based Moon Express and a self-described “orphan of Apollo,” now is confident that Americans are within a decade or so of returning to the lunar surface — this time to stay.