As Eugene Cernan prepared to step into the Apollo 17 lunar module in the Taurus-Littrow valley, he inscribed the letters “TDC” — his daughter’s initials — in the dust, then radioed back to earth: “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” Once in the craft, his words were less exalted: “Let’s get this mother out of here.”
As he and his crewmates Ronald Evans, the pilot of the command module, and the geologist Harrison Schmitt sped back to earth they knew that, for a while at least, there would be no return. Apollos 18, 19 and 20 had already been cancelled and Nasa’s budget, which at one point had accounted for 4.5 per cent of federal spending, would never be as great again. Cernan’s place in history, though, was secure — the last man to walk on the Moon — “to date”, he would doubtless want to add.
Cernan and Schmitt spent a record three days on the surface, collecting 250lb of rocks and soil that would keep scientists busy for years. He recounted the silence that struck them after they had landed: “The most quiet moment a human being can experience.”
There were moments that were sublime and ridiculous: “I looked back at this planet of ours and felt the logic and purpose and the overpowering beauty,” Cernan said. “I came to the conclusion that it didn’t come about by accident, that there truly is a creator of this universe.” The experience changed him forever: “I don’t know how you can go up there and not be changed,” he said. “I think I became a little less realistic and more philosophical about the future.”
The moment of levity came when the pair were bouncing along outside the module and broke into a rendition of the old standard The Fountain in the Park, changing the lyrics from, “While strolling in the park one day” to “I was strolling on the Moon one day . . . ”
Advertisement
Another piece of extraterrestrial spontaneity had got him into trouble a few years earlier during the Apollo 10 mission, which had gone within a few miles of the lunar surface. When making their exit, the crew — Cernan, Tom Stafford and John Young — flicked the wrong switch, and the module flipped over eight times in 15 seconds.
“Son of a bitch!” Cernan yelled to a live TV audience of millions. “What the hell happened?” Back on earth, he issued a reluctant apology after Nasa and the networks were inundated with complaints: “To those of you who I offended I’m sorry, to those of you who understand I thank you.”
Eugene Cernan was born in Chicago in 1934, to a Czech mother, Rose (née Cihlar), and Andrew, of Slovak descent, who worked for the US Navy, and whose can-do attitude Cernan credited with shaping his own approach to life. He graduated (like the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong) from Purdue University, with a degree in electrical engineering, and later took a master’s in aeronautical engineering, studying the use of hydrogen in rocket propulsion, at the US Naval Postgraduate School.
Before that, in 1958, he had become a naval aviator, flying 200 missions off aircraft carriers. It was a highly competitive environment, which suited him, and the precision needed to land a plane on a carrier honed his flying skills. He was recommended by a superior for Nasa’s third intake of trainee astronauts, along with Buzz Aldrin — they were the first former fighter pilots, as opposed to test pilots — and in 1966 he took part in the Gemini 9-A mission after the original crew had been killed in a plane crash. Cernan became the third man to walk in space, in what he later described as “the spacewalk from hell” — the Velcro pads designed to help him manoeuvre his way round the outside of the craft failed to work, his suit overheated, his visor misted up and he sweated so much he lost 13lb — but his experience helped Nasa make vital adjustments for the future. Stafford, the command pilot, later admitted that should Cernan not have been able to get back inside they were to cut him loose and leave without him.
The successor to Gemini was the Apollo programme. When the Apollo 1 crew was killed in a fire at the test launchpad, Cernan thought about quitting, until he read the poem High Flight, written by a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, John Gillespie Magee. It begins, “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth . . . ”, the lines read by President Reagan after the Challenger shuttle disaster of 1986.
“They flicked the wrong switch and the module flipped eight times
Advertisement
Cernan’s decision to stay on meant that family life continued to suffer. The space race was difficult for the wives; of the 30 astronauts in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes, the marriages of seven survived, although Cernan’s first, to Barbara Atchley, did last until 1981 — long after he had retired from space. “If you think going to the Moon is hard, try staying at home,” she remarked.
In the testosterone-fuelled world depicted in the film The Right Stuff, adultery was rife: space groupies known as “Cape cookies” notoriously tempted wandering eyes, though there is no suggestion that Cernan ever strayed. He later married Jan Nanna, who survives him, along with her two daughters. His daughter Tracy — born Theresa Dawn Cernan, the “TDC” of the lunar inscription — raised a family, and along with her two stepsisters provided nine grandchildren.
Like many of his comrades, Cernan admitted he had been a poor husband and father. “We were so tunnel-vision about going to the Moon that we never had time to get off that big white horse we were riding until it was too late.”
Apollo 10 — which reached a record speed of 24,791 mph — was effectively a dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, and Cernan was, perhaps, mildly resentful that his own contribution had been overshadowed by the men of Apollo 11: “I keep telling Neil Armstrong that we painted that white line in the sky all the way to the Moon down to 47,000 feet so he wouldn’t get lost, and all he had to do was land,” he said. “Made it sort of easy for him.”
Cernan was lined up to command Apollo 17, but shortly before the crew was to be confirmed he crashed a helicopter into the sea. He thought his chances were over, but was confirmed as the mission leader. There were rumours that he had been chasing a dolphin when he crashed, but William Barry, Nasa’s chief historian, said that there was no evidence of that.
“If he had not been able to get back inside they were to cut him loose
Advertisement
After 566 hours and 17 minutes in space, including more than 73 hours on the lunar surface, Cernan retired as an astronaut in 1973, the last of the 12 men to walk on the Moon. “I can always walk on Main Street again, but I can never return to my valley of Taurus- Littrow, and that cold fact has left me with a yearning restlessness,” he wrote. “Enriched by a singular event that is larger than life, I no longer have the luxury of being ordinary.”
Cernan joined Nasa as an administrator, helping put together the Apollo-Soyuz project with the Soviet Union that marked the end of the space race. He retired from Nasa in 1976, and worked for an oil firm in Houston before setting up an aerospace consultancy firm. Afterwards he become chairman of an engineering firm that did work for Nasa, and worked as a TV analyst during the space shuttle flights of the 1980s.
He felt that the legacy left by him and his colleagues had been squandered. “We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary,” he said in 2002. “The space shuttle and International Space Station are fantastic craft, but they’re not really going anywhere. I am very disappointed and disillusioned with America’s space programme. I am disappointed I am still the last man to walk on the Moon. It is a very dubious honour. It tells us how much we have not done, rather than how much we have done.”
Eugene Andrew Cernan, astronaut, was born on March 14, 1934. He died after a long illness on January 16, 2017, aged 82