Voices from the Moon
What it was like, in the astronauts’ own words. Excerpts from a new book by Andrew Chaikin.
- By Andrew Chaikin with Victoria Kohl
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 20, 2009
NASA
Just think about going to sleep on the moon inside of an oil can. And that's what we did. An oil can that buckled every time you pressurized it: boom-boom. And you're inside that oil can. You're on the surface of the moon, and it's time to rest or go to sleep, which is the biggest waste of time in the world—who wants to go to the moon to sleep? That's when you have a chance to think about these things. Think about what you just saw and where you are. Yeah, you think about those things. You don't think about them while you're picking up rocks and doing all these other things that you've got to do while you're there. But you think about them when you have a chance to stop.
—Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 commander
(Photo: Having left Apollo's last footprints on the moon, Gene Cernan takes a breather inside the lunar module Challenger.)
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Comments (1)
Another excellent book on this is Rocket Men by Craig Nelson. What I found fascinating about this book was the way Nelson deftly wove together the Apollo story with ongoing global events. The likes of Werner Von Brown, Walt Disney, Khrushchev, the Cold War, all come together in such a way as to shed a new light on an often told story.
Posted by Dave on July 18,2009 | 08:59 AM