(no subject)

[randomness]

Geologist-Astronaut Harrison Schmitt worked next to a huge, split boulder at geology Station 6 on the sloping base of North Massif during the third Apollo 17 extravehicular activity. The lunar rover developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. operated fine in this rough lunar terrain.
For about four and a half years during my childhood, the moon was a place people went to and explored on a regular basis. By the time we stopped, I was in middle school, and I’d gotten used to that just being a thing that was part of the world I lived in.

“People go to the moon a couple of times a year,” I thought. And that was neat.

It was one of the things I was excited about as a child. But I took it as a given, like having to go to school, weather getting cold in winter, or cartoons on TV on Saturday mornings.

It was a place like anywhere else, and people went and visited it, like anywhere else.

So it’s very odd to look up at the moon tonight and think that people stopped doing that, and haven’t been back for most of my life.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

yeah. I'm trying to remember when we stopped going to the moon, and I think it may have been before I was born.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The last lunar module launch from the surface of the moon took place December 14, 1972.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Long ago, it was the way of my people to travel to the Moon. My people traveled to the Moon in a ship called Apollo. I tell the story of Apollo in the hope that some day, my people will again travel to the Moon.

[marginaleye.livejournal.com]

I remember watching coverage of one of the Viking probes land on Mars. I was six at the time, I was over at a friend's house, the TV was (for some reason) was up in the attic, and we quickly got bored and changed the channel. That's really all I remember about it -- I can't even recall my friend's name now.

[dpolicar]

Maybe we were just thirsty, and now that we know there's water we'll go to Mars instead.