"Luna" August 1998
Alan B. Shepard, Jr.
Apollo lunar explorer 1923-1998
On the dusty plains near the crater Fra Mauro lies a tiny white globe covered with hundreds of little dimple craters. But it isn't a replica of the lunar surface. The object is a golf ball, resting where it fell after it had been whacked by Alan Shepard during the last Moon walk of Apollo 14 on 5 February 1971.
The scene of Alan Shepard and his lunar golfing exploits is one of Apollo's most enduring memories. If he had only accomplished this one space mission. Shepard's name would have been prominent in the history of space exploration. But a decade before his lunar flight, Shepard was at the controls of the Project Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 - the United States' first manned venture into space. Although he made a brief suborbital hop lasting just 15 minutes, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral, Shepard demonstrated the "Right Stuff" needed in those heady days of astronautics. The flight boosted US morale, and shortly afterwards President John F Kennedy confidently announced the national goal of landing a man on the Moon before the decade was out.
Shepard's spaceflight career almost came to an end in the late 1960s when he developed Menieres disease, a condition of the inner ear that reduces hearing and affects the sense of balance. So badly affected was Shepard that he was actually forbidden from doing any solo flying until the disease was cured. That cure came in the form of a delicate and risky surgical procedure which involved the insertion of a tiny silicone tube to drain fluid from the semicircular canal to the top of the spinal column via the mastoid bone. Thankfully the operation was a complete success, and having demonstrated his renewed physical health and eagerness to make another spaceflight, Shepard was initially chosen to command Apollo 13. The decision was not popular - not because Shepard was an unpopular person, but because he had spent little time training for Apollo and no time at all as a member of an Apollo backup crew, as had all the other astronauts who were selected to be on prime crews. Shepard was eventually placed on the crew of Apollo 14 with astronauts Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa. Shepard, aged 47, was the oldest Apollo astronaut.
When Shepard stepped on to the lunar surface he uttered words relevant to both the mission and his own personal battle: "It's been a long way, but we're here."
One of the last things Shepard did on the Moon was to perform a strange ceremony in front of the TV camera. Brandishing a handle from a lunar soil sampler in his right hand, Shepard said:
"Houston...I have in my hand the handle for the contingency sample return, and just so happens I have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I drop it down. Unfortunately the suit is so stiff I can't do this with two hands but I'm going to try a little sand trap shot here."
Thwack (an imaginary noise, as there's no air on the Moon to produce the sound!).
Mitchell: "Hey, you got more dirt than ball that time!"
"I got more dirt than ball. Here we go again." Thwack.
"That looked like a slice to me, Al."
"Here we go, straight as a die. Miles and miles and miles."
Contents
2 Alan Shepard
3 Cassini / Langrenus / Mons Piton / Aristarchus IE by Grahame Wheatley
4 Agrippa / Wallace / Messier / CCD images by Peter Grego
5 Crescent Moon / Eastern lunar maria / Mare Crisium / Vendelinus by Bob Paterson
6 Cassini / Gay-Lussac / Wichmann by Nigel Longshaw
7 Mt Schneckenberg - the Spiral Mountain
8 Special Topographic Projects - Aristarchus
