Apollo 14 Moon Landing Redeemed NASA

 

Apollo 14 moonship Antares February 5, 1972

       The Moon’s crescent to full phase appearance in the evening skies for a couple weeks each month should always serve as a reminder of how far mankind has traveled. 

As your footprints are set firmly in your backyard looking at the dark-splotched globe, there are twelve sets of human footprints that have kicked up moon dust in six places on our celestial neighbor 240,000 miles away.

I never miss an opportunity to remind people that 24 humans made the quarter-million mile journey to the Moon and back. And this is the week of NASA’s triumphant Apollo 14 mission that landed Feb. 5, 1971 almost in the center of the alien world we see in the sky.

       Redeeming the near fatal failure of Apollo 13 in April 1970, the mission of Apollo 14 less than a year later showed the technological prowess of America to solve a problem in front of the eyes of the world.

Stu Roosa, Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchel
Apollo 14 Moon voyagers

       The back-story of the Apollo 14 is an interesting one involving the first American in space, Alan Shepard, and his famous golf shot on the Moon. Then, there are the telepathic experiments, unbeknownst to NASA, by the sixth man on the Moon, Edgar Mitchell, and the red-headed forest ranger Stu Roosa, who seeded the world with “moon trees.”

       Shepard was an American hero who on May 5, 1961 took a 15 minute, suborbital trip to the edge of outer space, rocketing off Cape Canaveral inside Mercury spaceship called “Freedom 7” and landing near Bermuda.  While training for a Gemini mission, he was diagnosed with an inner ear disorder called Meniere’s Syndrome that affected his walking balance.  Shepard was given a desk job, sharing rein over the astronaut corps with Deke Slayton, another Mercury astronaut grounded because of heart arrhythmia. Together, they chose the crews for Gemini and Apollo. 

Shepard in 1961 Mercury spacesuit

In 1968, Shepard had ear surgery to fix his problem and was cleared for flight.  He put himself on the Apollo 13 flight crew, but later moved to Apollo 14 for more training as NASA’s oldest astronaut at age 47 when his Saturn V rocket roared off launch pad 34-B.  Shepard died in 1998 from leukemia.

The third member of the crew, Stu Roosa, orbited the Moon in the Command Module called Kitty Hawk for two days. He would have commanded and walked on the Moon with Apollo 18 had the mission not been cancelled.

Roosa was a former smoke jumper, and was coaxed by the Forest Service to take 500 seeds of trees with him to lunar orbit.  The seeds were germinated and grown by the Forest Service and disseminated throughout America.  The “Moon Trees” include included Sycamore, Sweet gum, Redwood, Douglas Fir and Loblolly Pine (one of which is alive and well on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee).   Roosa died in 1994 of pancreatitis.

       The destination for the third landing was the original target for Apollo 13, with a little rougher terrain than the flat land of Apollo 11 and 12.  Called Fra Mauro, the hilly moonscape is near the middle of the Moon.  Fresh debris tossed out of 1,000-foot wide Cone Crater millions of years ago was the goal, and Shepard hit the target with the moonship called Antares.

Apollo 14 landing site at Fra Mauro
3D rendering from NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter 

       NASA added a big handheld drill to bore into the surface and bring back three-foot core samples of lunar history.  Also, a wheeled rickshaw to carry tools was toted around with some effort in the very fluffy areas of moon dust, some places a foot deep.

       A color, vidicon tube television camera sent back the live images of the two, four-and-a-half-hour Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs) to the public. For the first time the commander, Shepard, was easily distinguished from Mitchell by the red stripes on his arms and legs. That red stripe to tell spacewalkers apart is still used today aboard the International Space Station. Though the videos from the Moon were in color and clear, the American public wasn’t as captivated by the lunar exploration as they were with Apollo 11 in July 1969.  And on Apollo 12, the video camera was damaged when accidently pointed at the Sun, eliminating any live television from the second Moon landing in November 1969.

Mitchell trots with map

       The alien world of one-sixth gravity proved a formidable match for the two astronauts, who struggled uphill in ankle deep moon dust in an attempt to reach the rim of Cone Crater and have a look inside.  But tired, disoriented and running out of oxygen time in their moon suits, Shepard and Mitchell had to reluctantly turn back.  Photos taken in 2009 by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showed their foot tracks stopping just 30 yards from the rim!

Shepard holding core sample tube
lunar rickshaw carried tools

The two astronauts worked hard and efficiently, bringing back almost 100 pounds of moon rocks and core drillings. They deployed a science station called ALSEP and detonated explosive charges for detection by a seismometer.

TV image of Shepard's golf shot

TThen, there was a little time for athletics.  Before walking up the ladder to end the second moonwalk, Shepard took out of his leg pocket a Wilson six iron golf club and stuck it to a sampling tool metal pole.  Then he dropped two Titleist golf balls on the lunar surface, and with one inflated spacesuit arm took a couple mighty golf swings!  Actually, Shepard needed several swings in his stiff moon suit to smack the golf balls.

Not to be outdone, Mitchell took a tool handle and flung it like a javelin across the Moon’s surface. It was a moment of distraction in the serious business of Moon exploration, and captured on video.  You can check it out on YouTube, along with all the moonwalks and NASA space highlights.

Shepard and Mitchell spend 33 hours on the Moon, each less than 10 hours outside.  Meanwhile, Roosa was busy in the Apollo mothership Kitty Hawk, making 13 orbits as the most isolated human from Earth, taking hundreds of valuable photos of future Apollo landing sites.

Enjoying the triumphant, three-day trip back in their mothership called Kitty Hawk, the trio landed Feb. 9, 1971 in the Pacific Ocean.  They were quarantined aboard the Navy ship New Orleans against any moon germs until Feb. 27—the last moon voyagers to be kept in isolation. 

       Shepard’s conquest of the Moon was symbolic as he was the only member of the “Original Seven” Mercury astronauts to have met President John F. Kennedy and fulfill his challenge to land a man on the Moon.

       Shepard was the quintessential jet-jockey test pilot, cocky and living the fast life.  In fact, the character Garrett Breedlove portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1983 movie, Terms of Endearment, is partially based on Shepard’s bravado. He parlayed his Mercury flight into the first astronaut millionaire through real estate investments around Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

 In May 2011, the US Postal Service issued a first-class stamp in Shepard’s honor as the first American in space, the first US stamp to depict a specific astronaut.

The sixth man to set foot on an alien world, Edgar Mitchell, is alive and well at age 84 on his ranch outside his hometown of Herford, Texas.  Since 1974, Mitchell has been promoting his Institute of Noetic Sciences. The institute he founded conducts and sponsors research in neglected mainstream science like telepathy, psychic intuition and possible alien influences. 

Edgar Mitchel circa 2000

       Of the 12 moon walkers, four were greatly affected by their lunar voyage.  Mitchell claims he felt a conscience presence in the void of space and on the Moon. 

Mitchell actually went to the Moon with a plan to communicate with several people on Earth telepathically while on the Moon.  While the experiment conclusions were mixed, Mitchell became more engrossed in the paranormal, UFOs and psychic healing. His experiences and belief system are outlined in his book, “The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds.”  Enough said.

       Mitchell claims that he sensed the consciousness of another entity in space. And though not a religious experience for him; it was so overwhelming that he’d never be the same.  He .has made controversial statements that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, as well as expounding the concepts of paranormal research.  

Other moonwalkers who were drastically changed by their experience were Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin, 84, who battled alcohol and pills to suppress ego problems with being the #2 and nearly forgotten moon man; Apollo 15’s James Irwin, deceased, who began a quest to find the Noah’s Ark; and Apollo 16’s Charlie Duke 82, who became a born again Christian and has written that he doesn’t consider the Moon mission among the top 10 events of his life! The other eight seemed to resume have resumed normal, yet very successful lives post-Apollo.   

The mission of Apollo 14 and life of America’s first spaceman, Alan Shepard, is vividly recounted in his book, Moonshot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon. Like any astronaut tell-all, much is censored about their social life. The superstar status of the first Mercury and Gemini astronauts, let alone the Apollo moonwalkers attracted their share of groupies, hucksters and idolizers.  And Shepard was on astronaut who seemed to revel in the attention. 

       The Apollo 14 mission proved America had the know-how and fortitude to continue with its exploration of the Moon.  Though the Apollo program was back and flourishing in the Winter of 1971, the US Congress would cut funding for any more moon missions after Apollo 17 in December 1972. 

The desire to establish an Antarctica-like base camp on the Moon may have been vanquished as sending humans there was being perfected. But America’s satisfaction of six lunar conquests in three and a half year span is still to be praised as one of mankind’s greatest periods of exploration.

China moon rover Jade Rabbit January 2014

And though it might be 50 years after Apollo 14’s mission, mankind will return to the Moon to continue the quest began by Americans.  But they will probably be Chinese spacemen! The Communist nation has boastfully announced the Moon as a goal for their ambitious manned space program. In January, the Chinese landed a successful science station and small rover on the Moon—the first time that had been done since the Soviet Union 37 years ago.

And if the next moon men are Chinese, let’s hope they come in peace for all mankind, just like America did.