Apollo Lunar Journals
I have been browsing the NASA Apollo Lunar Journal.
As a young child in the1960's, I would jump around our family back yard making strange noises, imaginging that I was an astronaut walking on the moon. I remember news reports on the television explaining the many details of a lunar mission, discussions around posters in my primary and strange plastic things in my breakfast cerial.
Last week I spent an idle evening pouring over transcripts, video and audio collection from the Journal of the Apollo 17 mission, the last manned mission to the moon. The crew included the lunar module pilot Jack Schmitt, the first civilian to receive a crew assignment and the only scientist to walk and drive around on the lunar surface. Schmitt's biggest regret is that he couldn't have stayed on the moon longer."It's like trying to describe what you feel when you're standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it's like." Jack Schmitt (April 2000) www.space.com
In the cold war propaganda rush to beat everybody to the moon, it is heartening that this mission was able to bring back a lot of good science. These Lunar journals go a long way towards completing the journey in my imagination.