On Monday evening, we stayed up a little late to catch the lunar eclipse. We popped outside, watched for a few minutes as it began. We went outside again twenty or thirty minutes later to watch it again. And then again, and so on.
Anna looked up the word umbra, which comes from a Latin word that means shadow or to be in the shade. Initially, to take umbrage was merely to go sit under a tree, in the shade and out of the sunshine, just as the Moon sits in the shade of the Earth during an eclipse. As we watched the shadow slip well past the midpoint of the Moon, Doug said, “No wonder people were afraid when they saw an eclipse.”
We have one Moon in our heads, the one we look up at. But we thought about the men who walked on the Moon’s surface, those who, as astronaut Michael Collins said in In the Shadow of the Moon, I
have two moons in my head. […E] every once in a while, I do think of a second moon, you know, the one that I recall from up close. And yeah, it is kind of hard to believe that I was actually up there.
We thought of the men who walked on the Moon and those who circled it alone, especially of Collins, who remained in the Apollo 11 capsule while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked across the orb’s surface and who has spoken and written about his adventures incredibly eloquently. Of his experience, Collins wrote:
Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have. This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two. I don’t mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon, I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life.
Collins’s wife, Pat, died last Wednesday in Florida. They had married almost 57 years ago; their anniversary is April 28, Anna’s mother’s birthday. He is certainly alone in a new and unwelcome way, and we extend our sympathy to him and his children.
Today, we’re still thinking about the Moon, but we’re celebrating the anniversary of the beginning of the Apollo 16 mission that sent John Young and Charlie Duke to walk upon the lunar surface. Ken Mattingly was the third member of that crew, assigned to Apollo 16 only after being booted from the Apollo 13 crew when he was exposed to measles by one of Duke’s children.
Young had flown on Gemini 3 and Gemini 10 and also on Apollo 10. He would also go on to fly the first space shuttle mission and also STS-9. Mattingly would also go on to fly two space shuttle missions, STS-4 and STS-51-C. For Duke, Apollo 16 was his only spaceflight, and he remains grateful for the sole experience beyond Earth’s atmosphere. This disparate experience probably explains why Duke recounts that his heart was beating twice as fast as Young’s, though, from what we know about Young, no calmer, more collected astronaut ever flew.
In the film In the Shadow of the Moon, Duke recounts the following about his adventure through space:
I was able to look out the window to see this incredible sight of the whole circle of the Earth. Oceans were crystal blue, the land was brown, and the clouds and the snow were pure white. And that jewel of Earth was just hung up in the blackness of space.
When Duke stepped out of the Lunar Module (LM) and onto the Moon, he was 36 years old, the youngest man to walk on another celestial body. He and Young gathered more than 200 pounds of lunar dust and rocks during their more than 20 hours outside the LM. The men returned to the capsule on April 24 and to Earth three days later.
We’ve talked with Charlie Duke twice. As we’ve said before, he’s smart and charming. We’ll end our words at this point and offer you Duke’s own words about his life, career, and hopes for our collective future.
Lofty Ambitions Blog 