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Eugene Cernan, last man to walk on the moon, dead at 82
 

Gene Cernan, an early NASA astronaut who was the last man to set foot on the moon, died Monday, NASA announced in a tweet. He was 82.

 

Details of Cernan's death were not immediately known.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/01/1...at-82.html

I just watched the documentary about him, The Last Man on the Moon, a couple of months ago. He accompanied the only scientist to ever visit the moon, Harrison Schmitt, a geologist. Among all the astronauts, Gene Cernan was probably the most skilled and undoubtedly the biggest character. This is one of my favorite photos of the Apollo program. Not only do you see Cernan with lunar dust smudged on his face, but also a perspective of just how small the Lunar Module was. Schmitt took the photograph from only a few feet away - the other side of the module. The lunar suits and helmets are piled on the engine cover which was positioned in the center of the module. They lived, ate, and performed bodily functions in this cramped space for three days with walls as thick as three sheets of aluminum foil stacked together to keep the instant death of the vacuum of space at bay. 

 

Sad. These guys were the pioneers of our generation. RIP

Just imagine being one of those Apollo astronauts. The first, and only, people from the entire history of our species to step foot on rock not named Earth. Just incredible. Not sure what would be a stronger feeling, the fear or excitement.

1972  -- kind of strange that the concept of sending people to the moon didn't increase exponentially over the course of time.  You'd think there are numerous people out there that would pay top $$ out there to have the opportunity to walk on the moon.

BOILER UP!

Quote:1972 -- kind of strange that the concept of sending people to the moon didn't increase exponentially over the course of time. You'd think there are numerous people out there that would pay top $$ out there to have the opportunity to walk on the moon.

Traveling to and walking on the moon is so prohibitively expensive that is far beyond the reach of even the most wealthy, not to mention the sheer danger involved. Regardless, the moon missions were mainly used for propaganda purposes during the Cold War. We had fallen behind the Russians and needed a grand mission to display our technological prowess.


Many scientists, including von Braun, believed landing on the moon was a waste of time and resources. There was never any doubt we could do it eventually. The real target was Mars. That was the true goal of many of the German scientists we brought over after WWII. They believed the moon missions were a huge diversion of time, money, research and national will. Guess what, they were right. The speculation was that after expending huge amounts of money and resources landing on the moon the public would become sated and politicians would lose interest in funding any further deep space manned projects. Check and check. While true marvels of their time, the reality is in the long run, the Apollo program set American space travel back decades.

^^^ good points all around -- Thanks !!