the explorers journal - The Explorers Club

W H A T W E R E T H E Y T H I N K I N G
great moments in exploration as told to Jim Clash
last man on the moon
Gene Cernan
On December 14, 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan
stepped up from the lunar surface onto the Lunar
module ladder. He left behind a world not visited since
by humans. He was the twelfth and final astronaut to
walk on the moon. Now a retired Navy captain, Cernan,
76, recalls the event like it was yesterday.
JC: Tell us about stepping on the Moon.
GC: Unless you do it, you haven’t done it. Having
come close on Apollo 10, it was important to
cover that last 47,000 feet. Once I finally stepped
on the Moon, no matter what was to come of the
next three days—or the rest of my life—nobody
could take those steps from me. People ask how
long will they be there and I say forever, however
long forever is, like my daughter’s initials [TDC]
that I scribbled in the sand.
JC: You’re best known for your last step.
GC: The more nostalgic, perhaps, were those final
steps. I looked back at Earth in all its splendor—I
think of it as sitting on God’s front porch looking
home—then down at my last footprint and
realized, “Hey, I’m not coming this way again.”
It’s not like going to grandma’s farm and coming
back next summer. I hesitated, asking what was
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the meaning of the last three days, not just to me,
but to you, and all who would follow. I didn’t have
an answer then, and I don’t now.
JC: Any regrets about your time on the Moon
GC: I left my Hasselblad camera there, with the
lens pointing up, the idea being someday someone
would come back and find out how much
deterioration solar cosmic radiation had on the
glass. Going up the ladder, I never took a photo
of my last footstep. Wouldn’t it have been better
to take the camera with me, get the shot, take the
film pack off, and then throw the camera away
JC: It is interesting that the first and last men on
the Moon are Purdue alumni.
GC: Neil [Armstrong] and I shared an office before
we flew. And we’ve become pretty good friends
since. He has been hassled a bit for being less
free with his personal life and the media. There
are lots of people who could have been first on
the Moon. But nobody could have handled the
after-effects with more dignity than Neil.
More of Jim Clash’s columns and videos can be found at www.
forbes.com/tothelimits or www.youtube.com/jimclash.
Eugene A. Cernan walks toward the Lunar Rover at the Taurus-Littrow, landing site of NASA’s sixth and
final Apollo lunar landing mission. Photograph by Harrison H. Schmitt, courtesy NASA.