Cernan
Cernan: “I saw that in the CERNAN continued from page 12 and head out, in our case a paper myself this morning, three-day mission to make anand how little we know. How other body our home, is what little we know even of our own we did in Apollo. It’s not differgalaxy. I mean since I was in ent astronauts, it’s a different grade school, there’s been space program. what, I don’t know how many “In Earth orbit you travel planets anymore, because around the Earth once evPluto was a planet and now its ery hour and a half, 150, 200, not a planet. Now we’re saying 250 miles above the surface. there’s other Earth-like planets It’s a spectacular place to in our galaxy. Everyday, every be. You fly across the ocean time we reach out, we learn in 15 minutes. You cross rivers something new. Discovery is and cities, and maybe even what it is all about. Curiosity your own hometown. You see is the essence of human existhunderstorms and hurricanes tence. from 100 miles above them. “Who are we? Where are “That’s all pretty spectacuwe? Are we here alone? And lar, but let me tell you, you the answer to your question don’t see the Earth per se until is, statistically there has to be, you leave it. how many, a billion, a trillion “When you head on out at Just four months before heading to the Moon, Gene Cernan other planets like us in the infi25,000 miles per hour and look takes a break from training to pose with his wife, Barbara, nite universe? I don’t know. But back and realize that horizon if you believe as I do that there and their daughter, Teresa (Tracy). Dannette Sanders, a that was only slightly curved has to be a creator in the uniPhoto: NASA verse, how can we, you and I, in Earth orbit, somehow closes friend of Tracy’s, is on the left. around upon itself, and all of be so arrogant to believe that the blues of the oceans and the a sudden you are seeing something the creator created life here and whites of the snow and the clouds. very strange, yet very familiar, and not somewhere else? Think about “So, let me tell you, technologiyou realize you are seeing the entire that. Will we ever find out? I don’t cally it is different because it took a Earth emerge in your window. know. I’d like to know. lot more to get you there, it’s going “It gets smaller very, very quickly “Who knows? That is why we go. to take a lot more to get you home, as you head on out to the Moon unI tell kids, and I really believe it, that particularly once you disengage til you can literally cover it up with somewhere out there is another from your mother ship and head on something smaller than the palm young boy or girl, our grandkids, down to the Moon. And philosophiof your hand. If your thumb is big their grandkids, who knows, that cally, you can make of that what enough you can cover it up with are one day going to take us back you want. And spiritually, I will tell your thumb. You no longer fly over where no man has ever been beyou, and I ended up coming to the rivers and coastlines and cities and fore. People ask me all the time will conclusion on Apollo 10 and reinhometowns, but you can glance we go back to the Moon? Will we forced it on Apollo 17, it is just aband look, without even turning your go to Mars? You bet your life we’ll solutely too beautiful to have haphead, from what I call the turquoise go. It will happen.” pened by accident. There has got blues of the Caribbean across the to be a creator, call him by what When the time comes that huEast Coast of the United States, name you want, dress him in any mans venture back out beyond low across North America, the plains, way you want, but there is a cre- Earth orbit, Cernan has a few pieces the snow covered mountains into ator of the small part of the universe of advice for those explorers. the deep dark blues of the Pacific. I was privileged to see.“ Cernan: “I would say, first, the “It’s over-poweringly beautiful Using NASA’s Kepler orbiting same thing I told Ron Evans and because its surrounded by what I call the infinite blackness – endless- telescope, astronomers recently Jack Schmitt, who had never flown ness of space and the endlessness announced an estimate that there before. I said ‘Guys enjoy it. You’re of time. Not darkness, but blackness. are at least 17 billion Earth-sized only coming this way once.’ “The major advice my dad gave There’s three dimensional blackness planets just within the Milky Way that I can guarantee you does exists galaxy. The possibility of life existing me a long time ago...’Whatever it because I saw it with my own eyes. elsewhere in the galaxy, and per- is, you do your best. You’re not goAnd yet within this blackness, three haps within our own solar system, is ing to be better than everyone at dimensionally, is a dynamic, kinetic a topic that has been getting seri- everything, but someday you’re Continued on page 16 moving living Earth dominated by ous discussion in recent years.
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