Funny Apollo Video (Apollo-17)
November 25th, 2009
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Sure, the Apollo missions were about expanding scientific knowledge, pushing the boundaries of exploration and going one past the Soviet Union in human space exploration, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t just a little bit of time for fun involved. Alan Shepperd famously hit a golf ball on the moon during Apollo 14.
I found this video quite funny. Jack Schmitt, an astronaut and geologist (the only formally trained scientist to visit the moon as part of the Apollo program) has finished with the mission objectives and is preparing to end the EVA. He has a geology hammer, which he won’t be needing anymore and he wants to throw it in the 1/6 gravity. This isn’t for any real reason, he just wants to, because it would be fun.
What I find so humorous is how he begs mission control like a kid in a store asking “mom, can I please please have one of these?”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under Good Science, History, Humor, Misc, Space, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 25th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Space missions usually involve work schedules that don’t leave much time for anything else, but still, you’d have to try to enjoy the experience whenever you could, I mean, it’s the moon!
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November 25th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
On Apollo-12, Alan Bean “smuggled” on a small self-timer that hooked onto the camera. He was planning on putting the camera down facing him and the other astronaut and taking a photo of the two of them. It was a joke, since the cameras did not have timers, it was meant to confuse the post mission people when they looked at the photos, because there would be two astronauts in one, so who was taking the photo?
He didn’t pull it off though. I think he misplaced it or maybe it didn’t work. It may be a good thing, looking back, because I could see how the Apollo hoax idiots would latch onto that and claim the timer explanation was no good and it was proof of a third person taking photos.
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November 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
For anyone interested in Apollo, I highly recommend reading some of the the Apollo Flight Journal, especially the entry for Apollo 12: http://history.nasa.gov/ap12fj/
Pete Conrad and Al Bean are a riot. If I remember correctly the timer was in the bottom of the rock sample bag. The kept digging around in the bag full of rocks and couldn’t find it. After getting back to the LM, they dumped the rocks out and found the timer sitting on top of the pile.
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November 25th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Chuck P. said:
I wonder if I ever met Al Bean if I could restrain myself from heckling him. I mean, I know he has already gotten a lot of it in his life… I bet he never heard the end, actually. So I think I might throw it in but in an understated way. Like I might ask if I could get a photo with him and then say something like “Well, lets just make sure we’re not standing in front of the sun, I wouldn’t want to have the camera pointed at the sun and end up ruining it… you know you have to be careful about that”
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November 26th, 2009 at 2:44 am
What I wouldn’t do to go to the moon! To be an astronaut, especially back then, it obviously took a lot of brains and skill, but to have the drive to do something like that, difficult, potentially dangerous and with that kind of excitement, I’d imagine that you’d have to be a real character and have a very strong personality and push like that. I’m sure the astronauts were all capable of drinking hard and cutting lose on their off time. Most of them were fighter pilots and test pilots. Live life in the fast lane, you have to have a good sense of humor or you go insane.
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