Gene Cernan

He never wanted to be the last man on the moon, and he almost certainly won’t be, but it’s a shame that he didn’t live to see the next man (or woman) kick up the regolith.

But he didn’t cover himself in glory, or make it more likely to happen, when he testified in ignorance against private spaceflight back in 2010 (the headline of the story is incorrect; they weren’t “defending spaceflight” — they were unwittingly attacking it). He was a hero of the Cold War, and should be honored for that, but his passing shouldn’t be an excuse for a new bout of misguided Apolloism from conservatives.

[Update a while later]

“It appears we are condemned to forego the human exploration of the solar system until the full measure of the first generation of space explorers has passed.” It didn’t have to be, and some of that generation, including Cernan (and Walt Cunningham), didn’t help.

15 thoughts on “Gene Cernan”

  1. Rand,
    The situation with the Moon reminds me a lot of the Biblical Exodus story. I feel like we’re doomed to wander in the wilderness until enough of the Apollo generation politicians have died off to allow room for trying something new. Hopefully at least a few of the more foresightful Apollo astronauts (those who don’t worship at the golden calf of the Apollo Cargo Cult) will live to see that day, like Caleb and Joshua did.

    Sorry for dragging religion in, but that thought’s been gnawing at me for a while.

    ~Jon

    1. Ironic that at some level it’s understood to be a mindset problem, but somehow the final leap ‘realizing that space will not be exploited until people have recognized ownership’ can’t be made.

      We have reached the end of the road to serfdom and don’t realize it.

      1. space will not be exploited

        Wasn’t that the goal of the Soviets for the OST and now for their ideological heirs?

      1. If it’s a religion, fundamentalist arguments should have some weight.

        *clears throat*

        Why are we spending tens of billions of dollars to build a fake Apollo program out of re-purposed Shuttle-era components and untried new hardware when we could just build real Apollo hardware?

        Heck, we don’t even have to build new command modules because the real, proven hardware, hardware that’s actually flown to the moon, is in great shape in our museums, having been refurbished, inspected, and lovely cared for?

        We don’t have to design anything new because what we already built for purpose works. We don’t need new test procedures. We don’t need new materials. We don’t even need new software. At most we’ll just upgrade the Apollo AGC from RTL to TTL (and a hobbyist has already done this – for free) and we’re ready to bend metal on a Saturn V.

        It will get us back to the moon because it already got us to the moon – repeatedly.

        The SLS is just a sideshow to blow money on a capability we already had, and can have again. We should do this while many of the original Apollo astronauts are still alive, saving us training costs on top of the savings of reusing the command modules. The space press wouldn’t even have to blow money flying camera people down to the Cape because they could just re-use footage from the original launches. It would save us so much money that we’d be sick of saving money.

    2. I feel like we’re doomed to wander in the wilderness until enough of the Apollo generation politicians have died off to allow room for trying something new.

      Jon, you’re a nice guy and everything but these kinds of sentiments will come off as someone offering up a scapegoat for their own shortcomings and failures (more biblical imagery). It is your job to make your dreams come true not “Apollo generation politicians”.

  2. Misguided or not, I have a great Cernan story. In (…I believe…) 1979, I was a college hire engineer at Rockwell Downey on the Shuttle program. I’d volunteered with the company Speakers Bureau, and several of us were drafted to usher a group of high schoolers brought in to see the plant and meet bigwigs. There was an afternoon Q&A session with the division President and, among others, Gene Cernan. A bright girl (…you could tell she was bright by the way she asked…) asked, “How do you deal with people who say the moon landings were faked on a Hollywood stage?” Before the center-seated-leaning-forward-about-to-say-something exec could answer, Cernan reached from his far-stage-right seat, grabbed the mic, and said, “I tell ’em it was *MY BUTT* strapped to that rocket!” (Cernan’s unequivocal emphasis). Thereby and for all time are any doubts laid to rest. 😉

    1. That’s a fantastic story.

      It had to rankle on the astronauts – guys who gave literally thousands of hours of their lives to Apollo (as well as, in many cases, their marriages), at extraordinary risk and meager pay, in the quest to fulfill Kennedy’s goal – to be told by some conspiracy nut that the whole thing was a hoax and con job.

  3. It’s a shame spaceflight never had a chance to evolve under market conditions before. That probably delayed exploration 3 decades or more. Still we can’t call this a market until there are more operators, other than SpaceX, and more on-orbit operations than there are now. Maybe Blue Origin will be the 2nd. Perhaps ULA can adapt to the market conditions and be the 3rd. Still a lot needs to happen.

    1. Only one thing needs to happen. Every time you see a picture of a world (any rock in space big enough to be round) just think real estate.

      The lower its value the more profit potential (think penny stocks.)

  4. Cernan did eventually come round (as your link shows) on NewSpace before he died, so I’m more willing to cut him some slack.

    I don’t think it’s so surprising that men whose entire exposure to space exploration and engineering – actually, for that matter, their entire adult lives, since they were all military pilots – was in the context of a government program might have difficulty adapting to new models of doing so.

    Today’s leaders have much less excuse.

    1. Cernan did eventually come round (as your link shows) on NewSpace before he died

      In what sense? He never asked to testify again before Congress to undo the damage.

      1. Well, I don’t know that he never asked. (Maybe he didn’t. I don’t know.) And even if he did, Congress was not obliged to give him the opportunity.

        I recall after the 2015 Falcon 9 accident…digging around…Cernan refused to rise to Neil Cavuto’s bait to urge cutting off SpaceX, noting that NASA had plenty of booster failures back in his day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijGr34EPLzg

        Don’t get me wrong: I was also quite irritated with Cernan and Armstrong after their congressional testimony in 2010. But at the end of the day, I think the astronauts are more easily forgivable bit players in the Apollo Cargo Cult. A guy like Rick Manning has far, far less excuse.

        1. Well, I don’t know that he never asked. (Maybe he didn’t. I don’t know.) And even if he did, Congress was not obliged to give him the opportunity.

          He could have issued a press release, called a press conference, whatever. He never publicly disavowed his damaging ignorant testimony. But if he refused to take Neil’s bait, that was progress, I guess.

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