December 6 1972 eugene cernan
veteran astronaut and commander of
Apollo 17 it would be the last Apollo
astronaut to stand on the surface of the
Moon
dr. Harrison Schmitt better known as
Jack he would be the first geologist to
set foot on an alien world Ronald Evans
command module pilot he would remain in
lunar orbit operating a battery of
experiments that would take this last
close look at the moon in the year 1675
Sir Isaac Newton was asked by his fellow
scientist Robert Hooke how he had
accomplished so much if I have seen
further Newton wrote it is by standing
on the shoulders of giants
the engines will build up to a truck of
7.6 million pounds we have a cut-off at
minus 30 second his cutoff was automatic
done by the sequencer one command
pressurized yes for B stage was not
given and despite the fact that it was
going to be done manually the sequencer
and the fact that said I didn't tell you
to do it therefore you can't be doing it
for 30 seconds that very properly
stopped the operation most of the work
was being done right off the firing room
in the launch control center at Kennedy
however there was a great deal of
support from the Marshall Space Flight
Center who had a comparable operational
group working there with their
contractors so we concluded that we were
safe and we gave the word to jump route
the one thing we proceeded which we did
17 you said you are go for orbit go for
orbit
after checking out the spacecraft in
Earth orbit they burned out of orbit and
headed toward the moon
we're in the middle of a snowstorm
Ron Eben's at the controls of the
command module America moved into dock
with the lunar module Challenger they
pulled challenger free of the Boosters
third stage and continued the three-day
Coast of the moon even as Cernan II
Evans and Schmidt headed toward the moon
directly below the Apollo 17 control
room flight director Don puttin around
his crew through a launch simulation for
the first Skylab as you're probably well
aware we are still working on other
programs
Skylab being the prime effort starting
in the spring of next year we're also
working on the cooperative mission with
the Russians
which will take place in 1975 and of
course we've got quite a few of the
flight control team as well as other
center elements involved in the work on
the shuttle so it's it's the start of a
new era
I hope Skylab of course will fly in the
spring of next year with three men going
up and spending 28 days and then two
months later after they land we'll put
three men up to 56 days they'll come
down and thirty days later another three
will go 56 days so a year of 73 calendar
year will certainly be a busy one from a
standpoint of manned spaceflight
December 10th 1970 to America and
Challenger went into orbit around the
moon
for the challenge ahead the next day
December 11 Cernan and Schmitt entered
the lunar module and undocked
she looks pretty an earth why did you do
it satellite
you're not clear
with the command module in the distance
they passed over their landing place a
valley in an area of the moon called
taurus littrow here they hope to find
the youngest material yet sampled and
direct evidence of lunar volcanoes
okay
that's super
you can tell America that gyro assembly
11 sunan Lane Smith the lunar module to
begin their first EDA their first job
was to unload equipment including their
rover the electric car in which they
would drive to the exploration sites as
Cernan drove the equipment Laden rover
Schmidt carried the scientific
experiments package called Elsa in
Houston scientists in the science
support room watched correlating and
directing their movements Schmidt set up
the various experiments Cernan drilled a
series of holes
both to collect core samples and to
implant experimental probes
yeah it's 29 minutes from now but
remember they left this side a little
bit late on the moon and on the earth
they were fighting time now there are
just so many hours of oxygen and water
in the backpacks so many hours of life
in the vacuum of the moon they're
awfully they'll break the whole world
before they'll break the cable this time
with the alsep functioning they left the
site for a shortened sampling traverse
well many parts of the else upper
functioning very well the heat flow
experiment is working excellently it's
transmitting back temperature data the
cooling down is still cooling down from
the drilling process and in a few hours
they should be starting to get true heat
flow information
it was time to head back to the
Challenger activate experiments and get
back inside as the astronauts rested
Engineers in two nations were working
out technical problems of the
apollo-soyuz test program the first
joint Russian and American space mission
joint mission is to provide a compatible
docking system and demonstrate do we
have compatible operational procedures
that were left to different countries
dock in space I think more than added as
a certainly a symbolic meaning of these
two large powers learning to work
together in space which I believe are
the new seas of mankind a new frontiers
and work out solutions the problems were
in although we're very competitive we
could still be cooperative and assist
each other and I think that this Paolo
Sawyer's program stands for just that
they would have won tests before they
got to work exploring the previous day
they had broken a rear fender of the
rover the dust thrown up was causing
trouble Apollo 16 commander John Young
had worked that night in a pressure suit
on a way to fix the fender on the moon
the astronauts put it together the
fenders section formed from a lunar map
molded with tape then held in place with
clamps from the lunar module telescope
it was a repair that would last the
remainder of the mission
then Schmidt moved out to place one of
several explosive packages which would
be detonated after they left the moon
mapping the lunar subsurface much as
earthly geologists explore for oil
Cernan would pick him up in the rover
for the drive to the first sight on this
Traverse station to somewhere along the
bottom of the core is not food is very
jagged and fragmental like geez finished
with the core - then we should be able
to go if we
Oh Jack Schmidt having a few problems
they would sample several locations on
this evap the men would cause more
excitement than the find at the crater
called I think it's the most exciting we
will come across since the beginning of
the photo program I believe that it's
going to be the most rewarding of all
the fine to do it no matter which what
you want to do they gotta leave it a
certain time regardless of what we got
they had to leave shorty crater and it's
orange soil and push on time the enemy
of the lunar investigator on the moon
and on earth
the precious minutes had run out
returned to the rover drive back to the
Challenger closeout EBA to the last
Apollo crew worked on the moon the
engineers on earth prepared for
tomorrow's day in space I have a model
here of the space shuttle as you see it
resembles a dela wing airplane on top of
propulsion system system is going to be
designed so all the costly parts are
reusable now that we're beginning to
understand space we're beginning to
understand the potential economic
potential the need is to bring a larger
array of instrumentation up in the space
need to provide man with a real
capability to work up in space December
13th yesterday they had explored the
south end of the valley today they would
go north
is the last time you don't really go to
bat for us something we know you'll do
it for man that's rough country in there
Apollo science will continue and I'm
sure my to the mysteries will continue
to come out for many years to come
but of this I'm sure man has learned
that space is his to explore and man
will return to space to explore to the
moon and beyond I'm firmly convinced
that it's changed the whole basis of
philosophy including religion I don't
think that we've begun to see what the
era of spaceflight really is that we've
got a long way to go and I hope I'm
living when we leave this solar system
on a venture to find another planet
Earth
once more it was time gene cernan and
Jack Schmidt returned to the rover to
drive back to Challenger but before they
left the surface of the Moon there would
be a brief and a final word from the
last man on the moon
while Cernan and Schmitt closed out the
last moon walk and prepared for
tomorrow's liftoff Ron Evans worked on
in orbit photograph observe describe
keep operating the cameras and
experiments in the science experiments
Bay in orbit as on the surface the
seconds are precious how is the
experiment working now working extremely
well we're looking for subsurface
geologic structure in the broad sense
layering for example radiometer measures
the temperature of the moon and makes a
an accurate map of the temperature
beneath the spacecraft it is working
with
the experiment itself games the hardware
is working perfectly precisely the way
it was supposed to work everything is
functioned properly an important part of
the experiment is it requires the man to
operate it 99 proceeded three to one
on the descent stage of Challenger
forever on the moon they left a plank
reading here man completed his first
explorations of the moon December 1972
ad may the spirit of peace in which we
came be reflected in the lives of all
mankind one revolution later Cernan and
Schmitt caught up with Evans and
prepared for docking December 16 burn
out of lunar orbit and head home to her
December 17 170 thousand miles from
Earth Ron Evans left the command module
Evans was retrieving film canisters from
the two cameras and the lunar sounding
radar data vital to the scientists on
earth before he got back inside Evans
took a last look at the crescent earth
in two more days they would be home
December 19
they rode inside a 5,000 degree fireball
through the atmosphere of Earth stowed
in a spacecraft almost 250 pounds of the
moon
this closes a golden chapter in the age
of space exploration in a way it brings
the close to what has been a very
romantic error in space exploration but
I want to make this very strong the book
is still being written the moon a lonely
world in the absence of man but here we
have left our mark a signature attesting
a legacy to future generations we stood
on the shoulders of giants and touched
the moon
you