Another way to enjoy Gene Cernan talking is to get the DVD of Al Reinert's 1989 movie "For All Mankind", which I highly recommend any Apollo fan getting. It's not cheap, but worth every cent:
http://www.criterion.com/films/599-for-all-mankindGene and 12 of the other astronauts talk on the soundtrack, and Gene also does most of the talking on the commentary track, along with a little from Al Reinert. To me, Gene is one of the best astronauts to listen to. He covers all angles from the scientific to the philosophical.
I've done 33 pages of typescripts of everything on the DVD, including indexes of all scenes and annotations for the soundtrack, saying who is speaking, the mission and the GET, where known. Anyone's welcome to copies -- PM me with an email address. Does anyone know of a way the Cernan family could be sent a copy?
A sample of the commentary follows which shows some of the little-known aspects Gene mentions.
Gene Cernan — The six flags
1:09:34 Gene Cernan: Those six flags — there's six flags on the surface of the moon. They'll be there forever, however long forever is. And the unique thing about the Apollo 17 flag is that it was taken to the moon on Apollo 11, brought back and hung in Mission Control for all the Apollo flights. So we took it from Mission Control and it is the flag that flies in the valley of Taurus-Littrow, on Apollo 17. We in turn took another flag with us, down into the valley, and brought it back, and that's the flag that now hangs in Mission Control. So the flag that is flying at the Apollo 17 site, is a flag that was taken to the moon with the Apollo 11 crew, and I think that's sort-of fitting. 1:10:17
Gene Cernan — The majestic moon
1:10:18 Al Reinert: Do you think that the moon is different, both in terms of how we perceive it, and also in a truly kind of spiritual-subjective way. I mean, we took laughter and everything else to a dead world. 1:10:30
1:10:30 Gene Cernan: From a geology point of view there's nothing exciting happening there, and yet it's been described by so many of us as magnificent desolation. It's truly majestic, it's awe-inspiring. It's just simply because of where it is and the fact that it's just gliding, moving, slowly, purposely, from its point of view, through space and around this planet Earth of ours. 1:10:50
Gene Cernan — We brought life to the moon
1:10:50 Gene Cernan: So we brought life to it, we brought happiness, we brought joy, and we left our mark. Those who follow us some day — whenever — will know we were there, that there was life there, that we did truly explore within the capabilities we had at the time. So the moon is dead from a geologic point of view, it is not dead from a spiritual point of view. We left a little bit of ourselves there. 1:11:18
Gene Cernan — Identifying Gene Cernan
1:11:19 Al Reinert: This is you, right? 1:11:22
1:11:22 Gene Cernan: This, ah... Yeah, it sure looks like me. You can always tell the commander on the later missions, they had red stripes. This is a little fuzzy here. Oh, I know how you can tell it's me, if you look at the right-hand leg, the pocket, you'll always see the handle of a hammer sticking out. So that is invariably me. That was sort of er... See that right there — you can't miss it. And that's the same hammer handle that I knocked the fender off with when I grabbed it, it caught underneath it, actually, that one. 1:11:53
Gene Cernan — The plaque
1:11:53 Gene Cernan: There, I think, we were just photographing the plaque that was on the leg of the lander. There was a plaque on every lander that said who flew the mission, when it was, where we landed, and the date. 1:12:07
Gene Cernan — Chris Kraft
1:12:07 Gene Cernan: This is Chris Kraft, who was the head of the Johnson Space Centre at the time and I think... was a dear, dear friend. And his one concern, as well as us getting the job done, was to get home alive. I think after Apollo 13 people began to run a little conservative. Here this was the last flight to the moon, we hadn't lost anything, we overcame the challenges and problems of Apollo 13, we sure as heck didn't want to strand anybody on the surface of the moon. And I've got a feeling that that was going through Chris's mind. 1:12:37
1:12:37 Chapter 18: Coming home
Gene Cernan — Lunar liftoff
1:12:37 Gene Cernan: This is the first real pictures we've ever had of the liftoff. I set the lunar module [he means the rover] about a mile behind the LM. The camera was operated remotely from the ground. We're in there, that's the valley, that was our Camelot, we're ready to leave. And we left with a tremendous bang and lifted off so quickly that they had to start the camera about a second and a half early just to keep up with us as we lifted off the surface. We used the descent stage as a launching platform. There it is — you can see the flag wave [from the Apollo 14 liftoff film] — and there we're on our way and as we look back down [Apollo 17 again], if you look at some of the movies that we took down there we can actually see the flag still standing. There it is, still waving [at pitchover] as we blew off, and there's our launching platform, there's that nostalgic place, place I called home, which I'd love to go back to one of these days, and probably as pristine and as undisturbed as the day we left it. 1:13:35
No doubt some HBs might try to make something out of Cernan talking about the Apollo 17 flag waving, which can just be seen at pitchover in the liftoff film, but it's due to the blast from the LM's rocket, not from any lunar "wind."
A bit later:
Gene Cernan — For All Mankind
1:17:56 Gene Cernan: Al, if you hadn't committed yourself to so many years of effort, talking to people like me and all my colleagues to get our feelings while they were somewhat fresh in our minds, and put all this together in one place, my kids, as well as my grandchildren, and all those who follow, never would have had any understanding of what it was like and how it happened, or what happened, and I've always said, it's important for those who follow to know not just what we did, but why we did it, and what it took to do that. And I think in For All Mankind you've brought that out so people can relate to and understand in a very humanistic sense. 1:18:39
1:18:40 Al Reinert: Well, I thank you for that. 1:18:41
Gene Cernan — We're not exploring space
1:18:41 Gene Cernan: Here we're only 25-30 years after those steps on the moon, and we're beginning to better understand. People are getting more excited and more interested. "Why did we quit? Why didn't we go on? When are we going back?" These are the questions I hear today. The sad part about it is that here we find ourselves at the turn into the 21st century, the millennium, and we no longer are exploring space. We had the greatest start in the world up the ladder to the moon. We're exploiting space, yes, but we're not exploring space, which is going to come back to haunt us, as a space-faring nation, if we don't decide that learning something about that great unknown that surrounds us is as important as the commercial or scientific values that can make our life better here on earth. 1:19:30
Gene Cernan — There's a young kid out there...
1:19:30 Gene Cernan: I know there's a young kid out there with the courage and the willpower to take us back up there, where we belong, to explore, and maybe that's the responsibility I had to be the disciple, to encourage other people to pick up from where I left off. I wanted to put a footnote on my book, saying, "The Last Man on the Moon — For Now." 1:19:50
