For three days in 1972, Capt. Gene Cernan lived on the moon.
‘Cause it’s next. For we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on the timeline of exploration, and this is what’s next.
- Sam Seaborn, The West Wing
This quote popped into my head tonight pretty early on during my (group) conversation with former astronaut Eugene A. Cernan (Captain, USN, Ret.). I was participating in a Discovery Channel blogger round table (thanks H!) that was set up to help promote Discovery’s new series, When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions.
A fellow blogger had asked a question about NASA’s new plans for exploring the moon and Capt. Cernan was explaining why he fully supports the Constellation/Orion program (aka. “Apollo on Steroids”). He was talking about the romance of “aviation in space” (a term he used more than once tonight) and the above quote (from my favourite WW episode of all time) rushed into my head. It was as if Cernan was channeling Sorkin, even if the opposite is more likely to be true. It did not matter though, because I could have easily stayed on the phone for hours listening to Capt. Cernan tell stories of his time in space.
The second question turned out to be mine and so, after fumbling a bit with the mute button on my phone (which you’ll be able to listen to in a day or so once they post the recorded conversation online), I was able to ask, “What do you think about when people say, ‘We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t do X.’?”
I have to admit it was a pretty open ended question and I had no expectation about how he might respond, but really I just wanted to make sure my question was passingly unique (though I’m sure this is nearly impossible as people have been asking Capt. Cernan questions about being an astronaut and walking on the moon for longer than I’ve been alive!). In any case, I didn’t take very good notes during this part and instead just sat back with a big smile on my face as I listened to him pontificate about space and technology and stuff (I’ll definitely be going back to listen to the audio of this).
At times Cernan got positively cosmic as he spoke about “the spiritual feeling of being out in the universe and looking back at home.”He described living on the moon as “my Camelot” and then spoke reverently about the Kennedy Space Center being the only place on the planet where people have left Earth for another “planet.”
From a photography geek perspective, one of the things Cernan talked about was how he wished he’d had an IMAX camera on the moon. Unfortunately the technology wasn’t quite ready and even if it had been available, they couldn’t spare the extra weight. (In case you’re wondering what sort of cameras they did bring to the moon, check out this site that describes the Hasselblad Space Camera.)
A follow up to my question went to the other participant in the call, the executive producer of When We Left Earth, Bill Howard. He was able to explain how the project came to be and how he gained access to the NASA archive vault. Footage from NASA turns out to be 100% in the public domain and so anyone can request any bit of footage for their documentary. The really special part of Howard’s show is the fact that they were given access to the original celluloid! and then using state of the art scanners upconverted the images to high-definition.
Now, I have to admit to having missed the show’s opening night. I saw an advert online and also something on the Post’s TV guide, but Sunday nights are not good TV watching nights for me and so I missed the show. Thank God for video on-demand. After the call finished I went down stairs and found a non-HD version of the show ready for watching any time I wanted. Being the patient sort I immediately called up the program, sat down on the couch, and watched. And it was great.
When We Left Earth is the story of mankind’s greatest adventure, leaving the earth and living in space. For the first time this series has digitally re-mastered the original film and audio recordings from NASA’s vault, including and all the key on-board footage filmed by the astronauts themselves. From John Glenn’s Mercury mission to orbit the earth, to Neil Armstrong’s first historic steps on the moon, to the unprecedented spacewalks required to repair the Hubble telescope, these epic stories are shown in stunning clarity and told by the astronauts and engineers who were there.
And now it is nearly 2am and I could go on and on and on about Cernan (the last man to walk on the moon – which is sort of, now that I think about it, sort like the opposite of that famous John Kerry quote about being the last man to die for a mistake) . And I could go on and on about the first episode of the show and talk about how it felt so familiar having read The Right Stuff several times and having seen The Right Stuff several times and how there, all of a sudden, instead of Ed Harris as John Glen I was watching John Glen as John Glen and Gordon Cooper as Gordon Cooper (and not Dennis Quaid). And then there was Gene Kranz (instead of Ed Harris – again). The show was packed with just really neat footage as well as new interviews with the real guys. Sure, it leaves out all the political background and only superficially puts the space race into perspective of the Cold War (I mean, it’s not like we just happened to have ICBM’s that could be turned into rockets for space men). But, I was willing to set that aside and definitely enjoyed the program. Now, if only Discovery would add the already aired shows to Verizon’s FIOS HD Video On Demand section, then I’d be really happy.
p.s. For further, far more elegant thoughts on tonight’s round table, check out HMG’s post.
My toast from last night’s rehearsal dinner…
