On Jul 16, 2009, at 3:34 PM, John Garcia wrote:
Alan Shepard launched in May 1961. The last lunar mission, Apollo 17 launched in Dec 1972. Eleven years to go from one sub-orbital flight to spending 3 days on the moon. That is an incredible accomplishment, the likes of which we may never see again.
Let's not forget landing on the moon and then driving to the equivalent of the next town and back in the LRV. No small feat there, considering they had to drive a vehicle that could be folded up and stowed on the side of the LM descent stage. ;)
But my best memories are still of the House Rock trip on 16. I can still hear Charlie Duke saying, "Look at the size of that rock!"
I watched Shepard's launch (on TV of course) and Apollo 17's midnight launch (again on TV), and I probably won't live long enough to see the next lunar launch and that pisses me off.
I remember going outside as a kid sometime around 1970 and seeing the gibbous moon (about the solar angle NASA seemed to like best for lunar landings), and thinking that it was entirely possible there was someone up there at that moment. It might have been around the time of 14, I can't remember. But the idea really hit me pretty profoundly at the time, that I was alive when our species accomplished the feat of landing on the moon, and it made me very sad even at that age when I found out 17 was the last mission, and that most of the funding had been cut after the landing. Bad way to come back to earth after such heady times.
It seems like a cruel joke nowadays, that 1950's-1960's technology landed human beings on the moon and all the more "modern" technology we had later on fell so far short of that mark. I'm with Pournelle on that .. never thought I'd live to see the last ones.
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