Well on this day in 1972 the last manned mission to the moon left for home! I still find it hard to believe that we were putting men on the moon in my lifetime.... pity I was rather young at the time (still in nappies) and thus didn't appreciate it!

We have this man to thank for it:





BTW, Bush has proposed to go back to the moon.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-bush-space-0114,0,4190003.stor...

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I suppose that's true even if you weren't particularly interested in outer space. It remains to be seen how this century turns out. I don't wish to put a cat amongst the pigeons but although I was just as doubtful that I would see it happen in the 1960s as I am now the situation was completely different & we couldn't help but be caught up in the excitement of it all, not to mention the vital importance of it as it affected every one of us. I don't think that anyone outside the US, except perhaps the most passionate space freaks, will attach the same importance to it now or get too excited about the prospect of man returning to the Moon. The main reason that Apollo 17 was the last manned space mission is that the general public was becoming bored with the whole thing & saw no point in continuing with an expensive project once the point had been proven & the Space Race had been won. It was the end of an era.

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We've had many a long & sometimes heated discussion on this subject in the past & I'm sure that had you taken part you would have no doubt about my own views on it. I see very few practical benefits from the space program so far that would not have been developed without it. It's easy enough to debunk the common claims of the pro-space lobby, most of which are completely untrue. Any benefits that were a direct result of it would have been possible without sending a single human being into space at all.

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I realise that & have no wish to repeat myself. You're as entitled to your views as anyone else. I've come to my own conclusions over many years of contemplating this subject & am unlikely to change my opinion that what's happening now bears even less relation to space exploration or benefit to mankind than it did in the 1960s.

The only way I can find some sense of value to all that has happened since April 12th back in 1961, is that, if not for the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria taking their chance, maybe we all would have fallen off the flat plate of the known world............

Each small step needs to be taken if there is a journey to be completed,.......I don't think mankind as a unified species on this planet can be totally restrained and kept on our fragile planet forever, without trying to reach out and see what "over the next hill" holds for us all........... 8)

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Well, I have been sort of following this discussion thinkint about adding something-and I finally decided that I should since this is one of my favorite topics.  

Doug, you are completely correct with this statement.  The general public had seen a man walk on the moon way back in 1969 and by 1972 it was long overdue for a new thing.  The government didn't want to spend any more money on it so the program was cancelled.  As the lauch dates of each of the later missions approached, nobody knew if the program was going to be cancelled before or after the next flight.  There was a lot of uncertainty for the crews.  One interesting fact about Apollo 17 was that the mission commander (an astronaut named Eugene Cernan) turned down a position on the landing crew of Apollo 16 (he would have been the Lunar Module Pilot and not the CDR but still walked on the moon) in favor of the command of Apollo 17-this was considered very risky because nobody knew for sure if there would be an Apollo 16 let alone an Apollo 17.  By that point, a lack of public interest and as a result budget cuts had already cancelled Apollo's 18, 19, and 20.

Interestingly enough, the only major group of interest who were upset with the program being cancelled was the faction of the science community who liked the program (some didn't like it).  Those who liked it were angry that after NASA had completed the political objective of a manned moon landing before the Soviets, they never put a scientist on the moon to study it in person.  They felt that without any more political objectives, that science should take over.  But, during the first 5 landings (Apollo's 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16) there were no science astronauts-all were military.  The first scientist was set to fly on Apollo 18 and then that mission was cancelled.  In the end, after a lot of debate, NASA bumped the scientist (astronaut & geoliogist Harrision Schmitt) to Apollo 17 and he flew on that mission.  

So, by Apollo 17, a lot of people in the general public felt the program had been draged long longer than it should have been.  Even the sicence community felt that the way the program had been done was a waste since so many military people were put up to collect rick samples when many of these astronauts knew nothing about rocks and some were even unwilling to learn.

I hope that made some sense.  

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Apollo 18, of the Apollo Program, was cancelled in September of 1970 as was Apollo 19.  This was to be the 7th lunar landing mission and at the time of its cancellation was expected to fly in July of 1973 bound for the crater Gassendi.  The crew was planned to be mission commander Richard Gordon (who also flew on the Apollo 12 landing mission as the CMP and thus did not walk on the moon), CMP Vance Brand (rookie astronaut), and as the LMP scientist Harrison Schmitt.  As I said before, to appease the science community, Schmitt was later bumped to the crew of Apollo 17. 

The mission you are describing has commonly become known as "Apollo 18" even though it wasn't part of the Apollo program, infact it wasn't part of any program.  That was the American part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project where an American & Soviet spacecraft docked.  I have heard this called simply ASTP (most common name), Apollo 18 (sometimes used) and even once Apollo 21 (because of the 3 manned skylab missions that used the same capsule).  So, the real Apollo 18 was cancelled in 1970-this mission is completely different.

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It is listed in NASA documents as "Apollo 18" so it is not confused with the other Apollo missions.  The mission callsign was simply "Apollo."

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LOL, it works for me.   

Agree, Hagar? I really don't think we've seen the last space mission mooned by man. 8)

Hehehe! The man in the moon better watch out- if he's hiding WMDs, then GWB will be onto him!

Hehehehe!



A.