Last Man on the Moon

After Kennedy now famous let’s go to the moon speech, one-fifth of humanity watched Neil Armstrong walk on the lunar surface, but after multiple Apollo flights would follow Armstrong’s achievement, the world, along with American politicians engaged in an expensive war in Southeast Asia, seemed to lose interest in the technological wonders of putting men on the moon and returning them safely back to earth.

When budget cuts came down from Washington, NASA was forced to cancel its last three missions, making Apollo 17 the last time men would walk on the moon.

Apollo 17

The twelve-day mission in December of 1972 included Commander Gene Cernan, Module Pilot Jack Schmitt and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and while the crew has been written up in history books and acknowledged by the space and scientific communities, none have received the public recognition they so rightly deserved.

Apollo 17 broke multiple records, including three days on the lunar surface, with moon walks lasting up to eight hours at a crack. After landing in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, they deployed scientific instruments while collecting a treasure trove of lunar samples for scientists to study back on earth.

Apollo 17 was the first mission to have no one on board who had been a test pilot, and also marked the first night launch in U.S. human spaceflight. While the three unused Apollo spacecraft were later repurposed in the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz programs, Apollo 17 marked the last launch of a Saturn V rocket.

Now that Americans have a growing interest in returning to the moon before conquering a landing on mars, a hearty salut to the nearly 400,000 men and women who made the Apollo moon landings a high-water mark in human achievement.