Many moons ago, and years after the Moon landings, I was a freelance photo-journalist living in the USA. I had an idea to do a feature story about what the Moon astronauts were doing and asked NASA if they could help me to track them down.
That’s a coincidence, NASA told me, as they were about to hold a grand reunion of all those astronauts. They invited me to the party.
I drove from Florida all the way to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, full of anticipation at meeting all those men who’d been to the Moon.
But alas, when I got to NASA HQ, they had an apology to make.
The reunion had been the day before. NASA had given me the wrong date.
I spent the next morning having a coffee in Denny’s feeling quite depressed. You could say I visited the dark side of the Moon.
The 1,000-mile drive had taken over 20 hours – true, not so long as the three days it took an Apollo spacecraft to voyage 226,000 miles to get to the Moon, but still a long journey for nothing.
Then it came to me. You could say I was moonstruck.
NASA owed me, big time. Maybe not the Sun and the Moon. But certainly the Moon, and meeting those humans who were the first ever to go there.
I put it to NASA that, despite all their new-fangled equipment (probably less powerful then, than the smartphone in my pocket today) they had got their co-ordinates wrong, making me arrive at the right destination, but on the wrong day.
The least they could do, I asserted, was to arrange for me to meet the Moon astronauts at their homes.
I thought they would send me flying out of their offices. But much to my amazement, NASA said yes.
I left the building as if I was on rocket fuel. Visiting many of the American astronauts at their homes or offices would be a remarkable experience.
With most of the former astronauts living in the Houston area, I spent the next few days driving around to meet them.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to meet Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, or Buzz Aldrin, who followed him out of the capsule 19 minutes later. They were both adamant about refusing press requests for moonwalk related interviews.
But I did manage to track down and write about 10 of the 24 Moon astronauts to find out what on Earth they were doing, some years after their return trip from the Moon. (Just 12 of those 24 actually stepped foot on the moon).
The one question that I didn’t even think, or dare, to ask those august Americans was if they had really been to the Moon.
I was young and stupid then, and it never even struck me that they might not have gone there.
But I’m older now.
And the evidence is overwhelming that, yes, these men really did fly to the Moon, and just as remarkably, came back down to Earth again. (I’ve read all the conspiracy theories, and the debunking of them all too).
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The Daily Mail ran a shortened version of my long feature story at a time when, yes, I really did write for the Daily Mail.
(That couldn’t happen today. The New European recently ran an article listing the 48 things most hated by Mail Editor, Paul Dacre. I was ranked at number 39. Bah! I thought at least I’d be in the top ten.)
Below I am re-publishing the original introduction to my feature story, along with an abbreviated account of what those astronauts were doing after the glory days of flying to the Moon and back.
One day, I will publish my full feature – along with the tape recordings of my interviews with those astronauts and the photos I took. But that’s for another time – maybe the 100th anniversary of the first Moon landing?
(Truth is that they are all stored in boxes, uncatalogued, in my loft, and will take time to find!)
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MEN ON THE MOON? By Jon Danzig
What on Earth are the men who went to the Moon doing today?
The Americans whose moment of glory was stepping out on to the eerie surface of that chunk of cheese in the sky, have not since fallen into oblivion.
But neither, of course, are their current movements as well publicised as they were, some years ago, when the world seemed to swoon the men on the Moon.
Actually, that very small and elite group who made the historic huge stride into space, are now mostly making strides in other directions.
Some of them now admit that these strides are the hardest – adapting to Earth after the Moon.
Many of the former astronauts are feeling their way around the business world, including fields as diverse as beer and oil.
Only three are still working in the space programme, helping prepare the new batch of astronauts for the space shuttle.
There were 24 Americans who made successive trips to the Moon, including the first manned landing in July 1969 on Apollo 11, to the last American landing in December 1972 on Apollo 17. Just 12 actually walked on the surface of the Moon.
This feature takes a look at what happened to the men who came down to Earth.
▪ NEIL ARMSTRONG – I didn’t get to meet him, but he must be included as he is the best known of the Moon pioneers. He was the first Earthling to walk there, on 20 July 1969.
Now a professor at the University of Cincinnati, he keeps such a low profile, that many children visiting the new and swanky ‘Neil Armstrong Museum’ at his birthplace in Wapakoneta, Ohio think he is dead already.
“Yes, the kids think Neil’s dead,” chuckled museum director, Kathy Minkin, who I interviewed after Armstrong wouldn’t do an interview.
[Neil Armstrong died in August 2012 aged 82]
▪ RICHARD GORDON, who spent 244 hours and 36 minutes of his life on the second manned mission to the Moon on Apollo 12 in 1969, is president of Redco Inc, an associate company of that fearless oil fire fighter, Red Adair.
“I guess that some of the astronauts changed their philosophy because of the Moon flight,” he told me. “But I don’t think it affected me. I like to think I’m the same guy – that it was nothing more than a great experience in life.”
[Richard Gordon died in November 2017, aged 87]
▪ ALAN BEAN, who accompanied Gordon on that second Moon flight, is currently planning to test and fly America’s new space shuttle. He gives public lectures once a month, when he mainly dwells on the history of exploration, from cavemen to Moonmen and beyond.
“In our lifetime, we shall see permanent research stations in space,” Bean told me, adding – somewhat worriedly – that the Russians are far ahead in this field.
The Moon trip still amazes him. “I realise that I did it, but it still seems like something out of science fiction.”
[Alan Bean died in May 2018 aged 86]
▪ ALAN SHEPHERD still had a foothold on Earth whilst he helped to pick almost 100 pounds of lunar samples on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
Even before he was an astronaut, he had set up business interests in shopping centres, banks and beer distribution. Today, Shepard is the Houston distributor for Coors Beers.
“I never look at the Moon without thinking about the trip,” he said.
“The area where we landed happened to be the Moon’s right eye, so when I look up, I can see the cheekbone area where we touched down. I’ll never stop thinking about it.” [Alan Shepard died in July 1998 aged 74.]
“The area where we landed happened to be the Moon’s right eye, so when I look up, I can see the cheekbone area where we touched down. I’ll never stop thinking about it.” [Alan Shepard died in July 1998 aged 74.]
“Once a man files in space, he may never be the same again,” said Mitchell, who came back to Earth to dramatically announce that he was no longer a citizen of America but a “planetary citizen”.
Following the Moon trip, Mitchell undertook lecture tours across the United States, urging the American people, “Surely, we can find more civilised and humane ways to solve our planetary problems.”
[Edgar Mitchell died in February 2016 aged 85.]
▪ JAMES IRWIN said of his Apollo 15 flight in 1971, “I felt the power of God as never before."
He added, “We went to the Moon as technicians and returned as humanitarians.” Since his Moon trip, Irwin has founded the evangelistic High Flight Foundation and lectures about how space flight brought him closer to God.
He added, “I probably talk about the flight more than any of the other astronauts because I’m the only one who’s not involved in some business enterprise.”
[James Irwin died in August 1991 aged 61.]
▪ DAVE SCOTT, spacecraft commander of Apollo 15, spent 66 hours and 54 minutes of his life on the Moon with Jim Irwin. For this, he was presented with NASA’s highest award, “for leading the most complex expedition in the history of exploration.”
After the Moon, Scott went on to set up his own company described as a “match-making service to technology and business.”
Much of the technology his business offers to private businesses was gained as a direct result of the Apollo space mission, he said.
One, called COSMOS, uses a mathematical formula devised by NASA to estimate the course of a spaceship, to forecast equity market movements.
[Dave Scott is 83, retired, and living in San Antonio, Texas.]
▪ AL WORDEN is one of the three unlucky ones – the one-out-of-three 17 former lunar astronauts who travelled all the way to the Moon, but never actually set foot on it.
He was the command module pilot for Apollo 15 in 1972 and had to look after the ship whilst his colleagues mingled with Moon rock below (or above, from wherever you might be looking).
Today, like many of the former space men, Worden is running his own business in the field of energy conservation. “We advise builders what the best thing is for them to do to save energy,” he said.
Worden is sceptical about those astronauts who claim that major personal changes took place after the lunar visits. “It was probably more because the Moon gave them a platform to talk about the things they believed in before,” he said.
[Al Worden is 87 and wrote a memoir about his Moon trip called, ‘Falling to earth’.]
▪ JOHN YOUNG, known as the ‘Godfather of space flight’, made space history as pilot of the first manned Gemini flight. He was spacecraft commander of Apollo 16 in 1972, the only manned lunar mission to the rugged Moon highlands, inspecting the roughest surface ever encountered on the Moon.
I met him at the Houston Space Centre where he still works, in charge of training the new batch of astronauts for the US Space Shuttle, which he described as “an aviator’s dream”.
He predicted 60 space shuttle flights a year, with tremendous possibilities for businesses being able to use storage space board for “outer space experiments”.
[John Young died in January 2018, aged 87.]
▪ HARRISON ‘JACK’ SCHMITT went from the Moon to Capitol Hill as a US senator. He was the first geologist to travel to the Moon on the last Apollo flight number 17 in 1972, and is the most recent living person to have walked on the Moon.
After coming back to Earth, he put some of his feelings into prose poetry. The Earth was that, “lonesome, marbled piece of blue with ancient seas and continental rafts”. He saw, “banded sunrises and sunsets changing in a few seconds from black to purple to red to yellow to searing daylight..”
“What the flight chiefly did,” Schmitt told me, “was to reinforce an idea I had long been edging towards. That there is one fragile spaceship Earth, and that if we are to survive we must all take a world view.”
[Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt is now 84. Last month he gave a talk in Switzerland on how he had a serious allergic reaction when he inhaled Moon dust. "Dust is the No. 1 environmental problem on the Moon," he said.]
▪ EUGENE CERNAN’s footprints are (so far) the last ones on the Moon.
Along with Schmitt, the two set several records for manned space flight. Their flight – on Apollo 17 – was the longest (301 hours and 51 minutes); they spent the most time on the Moon’s surface (22 hours, 6 minutes) and they collected the largest amount of moon samples (an estimated 269 pounds).
Today, Cernan has an office remarkably similar in its contents to many of the other lunar astronauts. It is bedecked with ‘Moon souvenirs’, including lunar rocks, photos, models of the Apollo spacecraft, newspaper clippings, etc.
He’s vice-president of Coral Petroleum, developing knowledge to help people realise the need for new energy sources.
“The American people, unless they have to wait in lines at gas stations or unless the lights go out, they do not really appreciate that there is such a thing as an energy crisis. But it is here and it is upon us,” he told me. “We must not let ourselves regress, we must develop new sources of energy.”
[Eugene Cernan died in January 2017, aged 82.]
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Deciding what to do for an encore once you’ve walked on the Moon was quite a challenge, which all the lunar men took on board with dynamic zeal.
Now, a new chapter in Moon exploration is looming. NASA has just announced that it is planning on sending the first woman ever and the first man in nearly five decades to the Moon by 2024, thanks to an additional increase to the agency's budget.
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#Apollo50th: Nothing to do with #Brexit! Moons ago, and years after the #Moon landings, I was a journalist in the USA. I had an idea for a feature about what the Moon #astronauts were doing and asked @NASA to help me find them. Read what happened next. https://t.co/xHgvaEt4F6— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) July 21, 2019
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