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Gene Cernan
Gene Cernan flew on Gemini 9, Apollo 10, and Apollo 17. Of the 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon, Cernan was the last.
On Gemini 9:
"Notwithstanding the fact that we were moving through or around the Earth or
through space at 17,000 miles an hour, everything I touched on the spacecraft
... would touch me back and I would go tumbling back out in space."
Here I am, 250 pounds in my spacesuit and all my gear and everything
and in zero gravity, it's somewhat of a helpless feeling, quite frankly. And I
had now to assemble this backpack, and I had to pull down the arms and twist
them and turn on the oxygen, and there were just a myriad of physical, heavy
physical work and labor to do and we take for granted gravity. Because we can
do that kind of work with ease if something is holding our feet to the ground.
Nothing was holding me anywhere. Notwithstanding the fact that we were moving
through or around the Earth or through space at 17,000 miles an hour,
everything I touched on the spacecraft or twisted or turned or tried to move
would touch me back and I would go tumbling back out in space. And finally, I
just had to twist the handle and try and keep my body in position with
literally the strength of my wrist and my forearms. I did get overheated. We
found out the Gemini spacesuit was, well, oxygen was flowing to keep me cool as
well as to breathe, and it wasn't good enough. My visor got fogged. In
nighttime, I had two little pin lights. One actually didn't work, so I couldn't
see very well. My visor was fogged. The sun sets, it's nighttime. I, in fact,
had ripped one of the interior insulation layers at the back of my suit. And
when I was working during the daytime I could feel the heat of the sun just
bear through my suit. It was a real challenge. I was determined, and I finally
did get in this astronaut-maneuvering unit. I finally did get it assembled,
checked out, strapped in, took off my lifeline, my oxygen umbilical and
communications umbilical that lead directly to the spacecraft, and I literally
put myself out there on my own. All Tom Stafford had to do was flip a switch,
and I would have been out there free to fly around space like we see perhaps in
the comic strips of 50 years ago when we talk about Buck Rogers.
On Apollo 17: "We just landed on another world somewhere in this universe."
Well, the first thing that happens when you land is you experience the
most quiet moment in your entire lifetime. I mean when you're coming down
everything's dynamic: It's shaking, the engines are running, you're flying,
you're landing and you get close and you hear Jack talking, you're listening.
You've got dust and all of a sudden you shut down. And wow, you are now where
no man has ever been before. It's quiet, it's still. There's nothing moving,
there's no wind, there're no trees. I mean, you look around, and it's almost
like science fiction. I mean, I'm looking at these mountains, I'm looking at
these craters around us. We just landed on another world somewhere in this
universe. That's the way I felt. And, of course, the first thing we wanted to
do was make sure we were capable of getting out of there if we had to. And once
we were satisfied the spacecraft was still in one piece and there were no
hisses and pops and noises and what have you, we began to open our eyes wide
and begin to look out and see what we could see and try to describe a little
bit about what we were looking at. And the magnificence of it all: I think it
was described by one of my peers as "magnificent desolation," and that's what
it was. But we were truly the first flight, maybe the only—well if we were
the first we were certainly the only because we were the last—to land in a
valley that had these magnificent mountains just surrounding us, encompassing
us on all sides. And they were very prevalent. You couldn't really appreciate
the size of them. Because you had no trees, no telephone poles, no cars, no
houses to gauge size and distance with. And oftentimes I go into the mountains
now, and I keep thinking, You know, that's high, but when I was on the moon the
mountains I was looking at were twice as high as the top of the Rockies from a
valley in the middle of Colorado.
On Apollo 17: "Finding orange soil on the moon was a surprise, and when I heard Jack say
that, I knew this geologist had been on the moon too long."
Well, we were driving to these geology stations, and we were doing
geology while we were driving. Jack was picking up samples, we were taking
pictures. One of the most important things about the geology on the moon is
your descriptions of what you see, comparing them to things that you've seen on
Earth so that the geologists and the scientists on the ground would know what
you're talking about; and then take pictures of them. So in real-time you'd say
"Listen, I've seen this lineation over here which we didn't anticipate which
has some changes to it that we didn't look for, wait a minute, let's stop and
take a picture of them." So our geology continued while we were driving. We get
to a particular station, we have certain tasks at that station, because from
pictures they had seen previously, the geologists wanted to look and get
answers to some questions. And one of these stations was Shorty Crater. I think
it was the second day or so. Jack was digging a trench, and I was over doing
some other geology work. Most of the time we worked together, but sometimes we
had tasks where we worked separately. And he yells out that, "Hey, it's orange,
it's orange! I found orange soil!"
Now, the moon is bland in color. I call it shades of gray. You know, the only
color we see is what we bring or the Earth, which is looking down upon us all
the time. And to find orange soil on the moon was a surprise, and when I heard
Jack say that, I knew this geologist had been on the moon too long. I knew he
was running out of oxygen, or it was time to take him home. And I went over
there and I said, "Don't move it, don't move it until I see it." Now, I don't
know how much he sees, whether he saw an orange rock or what he saw. And sure
enough I started over there and I was 10, 15 feet away, and I could see it was
orange. The first thing I did was pick up my gold visor, which was a sun visor,
to make sure I wasn't seeing something that was being tinted by the visor. And
sure enough, I mean, it was orange. It was truly an exciting find. No one knew
what it was, whether it was old soil, new soil, soil from oxidized soil, an
indication of oxygen or iron ore deep from the inner surface or whatever. It
didn't turn out to be what people thought it might be, but it was a major
discovery. And that's why you send people.
Back to Hear the Space Pioneers
Photo: NASA
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