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NASA Astronaut Gene Cernan, Last Man To Walk On the Moon, Dies At 82 (engadget.com) 99

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
NASA astronaut and retired U.S. Navy captain Gene Cernan was the second American to walk in space and the last to set foot on the moon during that mission. Unfortunately, today Cernan passed away at age 82. Engadget reports: During his time as an astronaut, Cernan logged over 500 hours in space and he spent more than 73 of those on the surface of the moon. Captain Cernan's NASA career began in 1963 and he made his first trip to space as part of the three-day Gemini IX mission in 1966. He went on to serve as the lunar module pilot for the Apollo 10 mission in 1969 before taking the role of spacecraft commander for Apollo 17 in December 1972. Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the moon for the United States. Cernan retired from the U.S. Navy after a 20-year career in 1976 and left NASA at the same time. Watch Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt sing "I Was Strolling on the Moon One Day" on YouTube.
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NASA Astronaut Gene Cernan, Last Man To Walk On the Moon, Dies At 82 More

NASA Astronaut Gene Cernan, Last Man To Walk On the Moon, Dies At 82

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  • Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Monday January 16, 2017 @05:28PM (#53678805) Journal

    https://xkcd.com/893/ [xkcd.com]

    May need to be updated soon.

    RIP, Gene.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
      We still have folks around, like Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon. The guy that was the last to walk on the moon is no longer with us.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      The only significant change to that chart would be if we could start to project increases. Unless any of them plan on becoming super-centenarians we're likely to hit zero since they're all in their 80s and I don't see any credible plans for a return...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ranbot ( 2648297 )

      The phrase, "It's been __ years since man walked on the moon" as a yardstick for progress [or lack of] has been an old, trite phrase many years, but it starts to have some meaning again when you realize these pioneers are dying off.

      RIP, Gene.

      • I also consider it euphemistic.
        Try this version: The last human being to ever go anywhere at all beyond low earth orbit is now dead.

        Yeah - Apollo was the last time humans went above LEO. Forget the moon, we haven't even gone to high orbit since.

    • Jim Lovell: Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the New World and no one returned in his footsteps.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        There would be a lot more American Indians alive today. Beyond that, though the outcome would be anybody's guess. :-)

        • So, what do you think the Europeans should have done when they discovered the New World? "Shit, captain, I see a bunch of fuckers in loin cloths on the beach. Looks like the place is full, guess we better fuck off back to Europe?"

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by murdocj ( 543661 )

        Imagine if we spent all of our money and time on sending guys on the moon and didn't send robotic explorers out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      It's already seriously out of date. It appears there were 9 of the 12 moonwalkers alive around 2010 and we're now down to 6. Just reviewed the Wikipedia page, and the two youngest are 81 and the two oldest are now 86. The middle prediction of 2030 is looking quite optimistic at this time.

  • Fair Winds (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And Following Seas.

    Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning

  • Sadly the last man to walk the moon died (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    And also sad in another sense. The last man to walk the moon died of old age, at 82, 45 years after the walking.

  • For all of the talk of colonizing space for the future of mankind seems like similar challenges exist on earth. The oceans of our world. Negatives, hostile environment, positives, lots of water and reentry to a civilization we know does not involve wormholes or warp factors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mmell ( 832646 )
      If only we could find some unobtanium, or noobtanium, or dilithium crystals, or vibranium, or adamantium, or duranium, or quirium, or . . .

    • The dream of space exploration & colonization is that it's a stepping stone towards other worlds and a vast spread of humanity across the galaxy. Not simply a one-time deal that adds a new region of Earth for humans to live in, but at great expense & difficulty.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The dream of space exploration & colonization is that it's a stepping stone towards other worlds and a vast spread of humanity across the galaxy. Not simply a one-time deal that adds a new region of Earth for humans to live in, but at great expense & difficulty.

        Earth to Mars (shortest): 56,000,000 km
        Earth to nearest star after the Sun: 40,000,000,000,000 km

        I think you need to make the same kind of leap as going from horse and carriage to the Saturn V to go from interplanetary to interstellar. Sure keeping people alive is an interesting challenge, but somehow I don't think generation ships that take ~70000 years is the solution. For that we need a revolution in propulsion technology that we're not going to get from Falcon Heavy, SLS or even Musk's ITS. A bit like i

        • Why should near-light-speed NOT be good enough for colonization ? I can see the complaint about it for a small craft with a few people. Nobody wants to go visit somewhere and come back to find everyone they knew has been dead for thousands of years, empires have risen and fallen and there is no recognizable "home" to come to. Especially when, for them, just a few years have passed.

          But for a colony - why not ? You are taking people with you, you're taking your family, you aren't planning to ever come back.

          • But for a colony - why not ? You are taking people with you, you're taking your family, you aren't planning to ever come back. Who cares if ten-thousand years pass on earth during your 20 year journey ?

            Economically, what's in it for the people left behind on Earth? Are the colonists themselves going to fully fund the expedition? Setting up a colony would be massively expensive. In the past empires created colonies to exploit them for resources and for strategic purposes in competition with other empires.

            But for a colony that takes 10k years of travel time (from the Earth's frame of reference) they might as well cease to exist. 10k years is the about the entire age of civilization itself. Whoever contribut

            • >Economically, what's in it for the people left behind on Earth? Are the colonists themselves going to fully fund the expedition?

              Economics is not mankind's only motivation. In this case - there is another rather good one: the survival of the species. Mankind cannot and will not survive if we are confined to one planet. No species can. It's simply physically impossible. Unless we colonize we are as doomed as the dinosaurs. Sooner or later the universe is going to throw a giant rock or a massive blast of r

              • I mostly agree with you, but you're leaving out the critical factor, which is the motivation for the people who stay behind on earth to develop and fund this project. The US got a return on the investment of going to the moon: USA #1 FUCK COMMIES. If we could establish a moon or mars base without breaking the bank it would be similarly useful. Commercialization of anything beyond satellites seems a long way off, but there are at least ideas in development about asteroid mining although the engineering chall

                • Right now - that certainly is the case. But I'm not so sure for two reasons you're leaving out. The first is, there was huge pay-offs from the Apollo program which were not foreseen (certainly not by the many, many naysayers who tried so very hard to prevent it happening). In fact, despite it's massive cost it was one of the most profitable investments the US ever made. The "beat the communists" was the foreseen one. The scientific and engineering advances made to do it - those made money, lots of money, lo

                  • So, essentially after we've solved every other problem and are just bored we'll throw some people towards the other end of the galaxy. I can believe that.

                    • It's one scenario, and certainly a pleasant one.

                      But I guess my point was - if economics is the biggest concern - then the biggest concern is based on something both unknown and unpredictable. It may turn out not to be an issue at all.

                    • if economics is the biggest concern

                      But I don't think it's possible for economics to not be a concern. The "economy" is just the interactions of people exchanging resources, sometimes controlled by individuals, sometimes controlled by collectives. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum...it always serves some purpose to someone, even if people don't agree on the usefulness of the purpose (i.e., resources used to drop bombs on the middle east is wasteful from the point of view of the taxpayer but useful from the point of view of the bomb manufacture

                    • You answered my point in your very response. What's the price of air to breath ? Oh right, it's free.... but this is the most essential resource there is. Take it away and anybody is dead in a few minutes. Even water we can survive a few days without. It costs nothing - because the supply is sufficiently larger than the demand that there is no profit to be made in selling it, no motivation to try and own it, and if you try to privatise it the political fallout would simply be too big.

                      One scenario for long r

                    • But even on DS9 you still had Sisko's dad's restaurant. With wait staff. How did Sisko's dad get the property for the restaurant? Why is anyone "doing what they love" busing tables? And on a daily basis to have a functioning restaurant? Again, people acting like they're participating in an economy. I don't know what a post scarcity society would look like, but it wouldn't look like Star Trek.

                      Getting to near light speed is probably feasible even with current technology. It doesn't need a lot of acceleration, just a constant one and you'll get there in a few years. It would take a lot of energy - but if you're fleeing for your species, who cares ? Use up all the stored energy earth has, why not - it will be worthless after you're gone.

                      Not a chance. Remember you don't just need energy you need reaction mass. Stuff to throw out the back of the ship (us

                    • >But even on DS9 you still had Sisko's dad's restaurant

                      And if you had paid better attention - you would have noticed that he didn't charge the people who came to eat. He ran the restaurant because he got personal satisfaction from keeping his cultural cuisine heritage alive. His "wait staff" likewise did it because they got some or other personal benefit out of it.

                      >How did Sisko's dad get the property for the restaurant?
                      That one wasn't well answered in the show, land is tricky since on the planet itse

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Qzukk ( 229616 )

      If you thought keeping 1 atmosphere of pressure inside a tin can was too hard, good luck keeping thousands of atmospheres of pressure out.

  • So are we going back to the moon? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Where "we" means USA (government or private), probably in conjunction with other countries.

    I think we should. Not so that we can learn more about the moon, but that we can learn more about the process of human space flight. Back in the days of Apollo our computing resources were primitive, we couldn't even archive the data properly. Now we can, and we can collect orders of magnitude more data per mission.

  • Netflix had a great documentary on him called, predictably, 'Last man on the moon', it's worth watching just for the stories of how they slept on the moon (IIRC).

  • The real moon walker outlived a singer/dancer who moonwalked on earth.

  • Well the day had to come. Though it's too bad these guys are dying off while there's a "moon landing denial movement". Which is sad.

    We need to get another crew up there soon as a way to combat ongoing anti-scientific "belief systems" before we dumb down the entire country to the point we do something really stupid.

    • Good luck doing that with president pussy-grabber and the austerity cowboys setting the budget. In fact, hope and pray that it isn't attempted until the next one takes office - the LAST thing you want is moonlanding attempt being directed by somebody who couldn't figure out how to make money out of a casino !

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