Question: Who was the last person to walk on the moon? (the answer at the end and NO GOOGLING!)
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the 2nd to last time we ever walked on the moon!
I’ve always been fascinated by space. Perhaps it’s the era I grew up in that just leaving the planet was a major world wide event. Perhaps it’s because my birthday is July 20th (we landed on the moon July 20th, 1969) In fact growing up I wanted to be an astronaut or at the least a fighter pilot. Lack of IQ and being color blind pretty much squashed that dream – so radio it was (now THAT’S one giant leap for Garth-kind!)
Now a days you can pay $250,000 (or just be a celebrity) and you can fly into space! Heck they are even building space hotels – no kidding!
After the Apollo Missions ended with the final steps on the moon in 1972, people just seemed to lose interest in space travel. Then the Shuttle program started and we got interested again at the novel way we could go into space on what looked like a plane, and come back down and land like a plane.
At first those too were a big deal, then mission by mission we lost interest and they were blasting off and it didn’t even make the first 10 pages of the paper or even the evening news.
When you think of it, it’s amazing what we CAN DO, IF we really want to and ALL band together for the common goal. US President Kennedy stood before Congress on May 25, 1961, and proposed that the US “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Not everyone was impressed; a Gallup Poll indicated that 58 percent of Americans were opposed.
However just 7 years later we WERE walking on the Moon! Think about that for a minute. When Kennedy made that statement we barely left the earth and within 7 years we were on the moon! 7 years later 75% of the US Population were glued to their TV set to watch that historic moment when Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man…”
Sadly 47% of people 25 and under do NOT know who the first person on the moon was! Space travel to them is a novelty…it’s Captain Kirk flying with a guy that owns Amazon into space…it’s Elon Musk…it’s just nothing special any more and that’s kind of sad.
In 1972 the Apollo 17 lunar module doors opened and astronauts once again set foot on the moon. Perhaps NASA knew, but little did WE know this would be our last trip to the moon for over a half a century.
After Apollo ended, the U.S. focused on the space shuttle program, the space station and remote missions into deep space, but they are planning on going back with its new Space Launch System rocket that’s at the core of the Artemis program.
The first of the huge rockets is supposed to blast off for a trip to the moon without crew later this year, and with AI Technology, will another human set foot….remains to be seen.
The whole Apollo Moon Missions were far shorter than people think, 3 years. Even more surprising is that only 12 people have ever touched foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong being the first and Buzz Aldrin the 2nd. Today only 4 of them are alive, and soon they too will be swept away by time.
However astronaut Gene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17 would take the final step by a human on the moon on this day in 1972, ending a truly magical time in human history.
If we can go from barely flying higher than 6 miles up to walking on the moon in 7 years with technology that existed 60 years ago, imagine what we should be able to accomplish TODAY! The only trouble is we wont work together anymore. We’ve quit looking up at the stars and dreaming and are just happy to live in our own little world, not even worrying about the planet we all live on.
Perhaps that lone footprint left on the moon 1/2 century ago marked the end of an era where all people on earth quit working together.
Gene Cernan commented in an interview what impact it made on him to take a final look back at the earth standing on the moon, and thinking that every single person who ever was and is, (other than his two fellow astronauts) is right there.
At that moment he totally realized indeed what a small planet we live on and how we HAVE to work together, it’s not an option. That we may look a bit different, talk a bit different and live in different parts, but we all have to work together because at the end of the day we all live in the same house known as Earth and have no where else to go!
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