Like the veterans of wars long past, the numbers of Apollo programme astronauts are dwindling. This week we lost Eugene Cernan – the last man to leave his footprints on the Moon. Cernan was one of the elite 12 who visited the lunar surface, of whom just six remain.
His list of achievements is long – including spending a record three days on the surface and driving the Moon buggy that allowed the explorers to get further afield from their landing site and collect heavier objects. But he handled fame with grace and good humour. Cernan once said, quite simply: “I spent 75 hours on the Moon. I drove a car on the Moon. Crazy!”
For those who were young in the late 1960s and early 70s, it seemed that landing on the Moon would be just the beginning – a forerunner to lunar colonies and manned missions to Mars. Economics and shifting priorities have put those ambitions on hold. Sadly, we will soon face a world where nobody who stood on the Moon will stand among us.
