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    Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

    Gene Cernan, captain of Apollo 17 and the last man to set foot on the Moon in December 1972, has died aged 82.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38641121
    http://abc13.com/news/last-man-to-walk-on-the-moon-has-died/1705193/
    https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-reflects-on-legacy-of-last-man-to-walk-on-moon

    "I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I'd like to just say what I believe history will record: that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow.
    And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
    Fully half of the twelve men to ever walk on the surface of the Moon have now left us.

    #2
    Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

    I read Andrew Smith's book Moon Dust a few years ago. He managed to interview the nine who were left at the time.

    Cernan's father was born 20 minutes up the railway line from where I live, in Cadca, on the Slovak/Czech/Polish border. Eugene's death is getting a lot of coverage in Slovak media.

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      #3
      Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

      jameswba wrote: I read Andrew Smith's book Moon Dust a few years ago. He managed to interview the nine who were left at the time.
      That was a fantastic book - I think I may read it again. Cernan is also the subject of a documentary on Netflix -''The Last Man on the Moon'' - which is worth a watch.

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        #4
        Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

        I'm rather gutted, I have to say. Apart from his unique accidental historical significance, there's the fact that contrasted with some of the other Apollo astronauts who tended, by definition, to be rather 'straight down the line' types – unsurprisingly in people who were all test pilots: you don't want too many wacky rebels and dreamers in that line of operations – Eugene Cernan always seemed like one of the most interesting and engaging of them. (In this respect he's in the company of Buzz Aldrin for starters, it should be said.)
        Apart from anything, he was passionately keen that his distinction as last man on the moon should cease to be so, having never imagined when he originally left there (less than three and a half years after Apollo 11 first landed) that forty or fifty years later we'd still never have sent anyone else at all.

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          #5
          Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

          The six who are still with us:

          Buzz Aldrin
          Alan Bean
          David Scott
          John Young
          Charles Duke
          Harrison "Jack" Schmitt

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            #6
            Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

            I was always surprised the Michael collins movie ended with him getting shot at Beal na Blath, and never covered his time as an astronaut, or his role in apollo 11.

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              #7
              Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

              Various Artist wrote: I'm rather gutted, I have to say. Apart from his unique accidental historical significance, there's the fact that contrasted with some of the other Apollo astronauts who tended, by definition, to be rather 'straight down the line' types – unsurprisingly in people who were all test pilots: you don't want too many wacky rebels and dreamers in that line of operations – Eugene Cernan always seemed like one of the most interesting and engaging of them. (In this respect he's in the company of Buzz Aldrin for starters, it should be said.)
              Apart from anything, he was passionately keen that his distinction as last man on the moon should cease to be so, having never imagined when he originally left there (less than three and a half years after Apollo 11 first landed) that forty or fifty years later we'd still never have sent anyone else at all.
              Yes, sad news this. The final track on Public Service Broadcasting's The Race for Space features Cernan's closing speech before leaving the moon's surface. A fitting tribute that I have playing as I write this. It's clear from just these words that he was focussed on the idea that moon exploration should not end with Apollo XVII*.

              That final mission was also unique for being the only one of the moon landings to include a genuine scientist (Harrison Schmidt). Andrew Chaikin's A Man on the Moon is an interesting read in this regard - having fought for years to get geologists onto the moon landing parties, the scientific community won the argument just in time to see the funding for the remaining missions cut.

              * Incidentally, there's something very satisfying in using Roman numerals in a Google search. Feels like doing it properly.

              Comment


                #8
                Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

                What, like the Romans used to do it, you mean...?!

                There was a lovely clip played on the 8am BBC radio news this morning of Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt singing on the Moon, mucking around with the song lyrics and generally marvelling at the fact they're out for the most extraordinary stroll anyone's ever taken.

                Here it is, in fact:
                [video size=60] [/video]

                Like you, I'm listening to Tomorrow from The Race To Space right now. The final words that I quoted in the OP above, which also play in the song, are all the more affecting for evoking the same words "For All Mankind", spoken in a different context, that play at the thunderous crescendo of the earlier track Sputnik, the most powerful moment of the album for me. Weirdly enough I was thinking about this only a couple of days ago.
                Not quite as weird though as happening to wiki-walk my way onto John Glenn's Wikipedia page last month, reading the entirety of it and discovering at the very bottom he was seriously ill – then finding out very shortly later that he'd died more or less at that exact minute I'd been reading it.
                I must stop thinking about astronauts, it's getting more dangerous for them than space travel was.

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                  #9
                  Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

                  Is it that disappointing we've never been back to the Moon? I mean, we know what's there, now (not a lot, maybe some iron ore and aluminium but we're not short of that here) and the sheer cost and risk of sending astronauts there was horrendous at the time, and would remain so now.

                  I'd love to live to see the first man (or woman) on Mars, although that too appears just a barren rock, really. The fact we'd set foot - a a species - on another planet, would for my money be worth the effort. Far better than spending £200bn on fucking trident.

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                    #10
                    Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

                    Various Artist wrote: Eugene Cernan always seemed like one of the most interesting and engaging of them. (In this respect he's in the company of Buzz Aldrin for starters, it should be said.)
                    Though from what I remember - and I must read it again too - Andrew Smith characterised Cernan as the 'professional moonwalker', the one who was constantly meeting presidents and congressmen, giving big set-piece speeches, offering motivational quotes and the rest. He said he was as difficult to secure an interview with as Armstrong, but for totally opposite reasons.

                    Aldrin seems to have been engaging partly because he was/is so clearly a troubled man.

                    Slovak TV had footage of Cernan's most recent returns to his father's homeland, in 1994 and 2004, and those really are rather moving to watch.

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                      #11
                      Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

                      Is it that disappointing we've never been back to the Moon? I mean, we know what's there, now
                      Well, not really we don't. We only definitely found water a couple of years ago.

                      Besides, it's important to go back and establish a beach head for a few reasons.

                      1. It's quicker, cheaper and easier to put people there than Mars. And it'd be a great proving ground for future Mars missions, given that it's as difficult to live on. We could do all the testing in a place where light delay is minimal, conditions are similar and it's not completely impossible to get back from if something goes awry.

                      2. We need to start thinking beyond the Earth if we're to survive as a species. One well placed chunk of sky-iron and we're all done for. Proliferation is preservation. Again The Moon is a handy first stop.

                      3. With enough investment etc. we could launch missions to most of the solar system FROM the moon after building the probesships etc there. It would mean that fuel would be a much smaller component of any mission allowing bigger, better designed craft to be launched.

                      4. Moonbases are fucking cool.

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                        #12
                        Last man to leave the moon turns out the lights

                        Great post, hobbes, thank you.

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