The Men From The Moon

To the Moon
By Drew Davis; Executive Director 11-01-08
Available at http://www.wiscnews.com/wde/opinion/312249

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced to the world that the United States would endeavor to reach the Moon before the decade was over. He made this announcement regardless of the fact his government and civilian space agency didn’t have the slightest clue how they were going to achieve that goal. Notwithstanding, on July 20, 1969, at 10:56pm EDT, as the world looked on, the United States turned millennia of dreams into reality and put a man on the Moon. In fact, during the entirety of the Apollo program, we put twelve men on the Moon.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with seven of those twelve astronauts from the Apollo Space Program and listen as they recalled the memories of their lunar experience. It was certainly my pleasure to be joined by Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Eugene Cernan, Charles Duke, Joe Kerwin, Ken Mattingly, and John Young, and, having not been alive during the space race, I knew my eyes were going to be opened to the sheer marvel that this accomplishment was.

With President George H.W. Bush in attendance, we had all just watched the premier showing of Jeffrey Roth’s The Wonder Of It All, a documentary chronicling the individual histories and personalities of these space men. During the showing, my curiosity created a cache of questions numbering just shy of infinity. The beauty of this film, unlike the many about Apollo, was its focus—it concentrated solely on the astronauts themselves, their personal stories, and the verve of their recollections.

During this discussion, the astronauts shared with us the little things most people do not even think about.
Charles Duke, the youngest of the twelve astronauts to walk on the Moon,
vividly recalled the feel and smell of moon dust that had accumulated on his spacesuit. As he played with it onboard the LEM (lunar excursion module), it was remarkably soft, he remembered, and smelled similar to sulfur. With scent being the sense linked closest to memory, one wonders if every time a match is lit around these men their minds whisk them back to a time and place thirty years ago and 250,000 miles away. That’s a powerful match.

Knowing the Moon’s surface was covered by craters, one of their great fears was that the LEM would tip over during landing and be unable to launch them back into orbit. John Young, of Apollo 16—the first person to fly into space six times—noted how grossly NASA had underestimated the number of craters on the Moon’s surface. Everyone was expecting a few hundred; there were thousands—everywhere. Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, provided an inspiring perspective on the Moon’s surface that shattered my preconceived notions:

“We had mountains rising above us on three sides that are higher than the Grand Canyon is deep, and we landed down in the middle of that. No trees; it’s not green; no water, no…no Colorado River running through, nothing. How can something so desolate be so magnificent? I just, it’s…it’s the moment of it all, I guess.”

I was certain that walking on the Moon would have been an overwhelmingly transformational experience, personally. The astronauts had trained so rigorously, so repetitively, however, that the flight itself
seemed as though they were simply in the simulator again; and, when they finally made it to the Moon, their to-do list was so enormous that work consumed most of their thoughts—that is, until they looked up from the dusty landscape and saw their home planet, a “little blue marble,” housing the entirety of life in the universe as they knew it, floating in the distance. It was alone amongst an indefinable blackness, they recalled. Blacker than anything they could possibly fathom.

The United States had the only civilian space program in the world at the time. Every other was run by a military. This made our voyage extraordinary; we truly had come in peace. The emotion of their performance was remarkable. The president himself was overwhelmed with the power and grace of their presentation, and I had finally been able to understand the magnitude and significance our endeavors into space. Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 may have said it best when he asked, “When will we be going back, and who will that be?” I am sure the answers are soon and American heroes.

Drew Davis is a columnist for Capital Newspapers, headquartered in Madison, WI.