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For century upon century...

to explore the moon was considered...

the dream of the addlebrained or foolhardy.

Only divine beings, or supermen...

could withstand the rigors and distance of such a journey.

But then, early in the 20th century...

mortal humans went aloft on mechanical wings...

defying gravity and redefining the realm of possibility.

Forever after...

the moon became a goal within the grasp of those on Earth.

For if man could build a machine to make him fly...

he would eventually build one to take him to the moon.

When and how and who...

was only a matter of time.

From December of 1968 to December of 1972...

24 representatives of the human race...

voyaged to the moon...

and half as many walked upon its surface.

In all, nine voyages...

across the quarter-million-mile distance...

from earthly safety to lunar emptiness.

Each one of them dangerous and expensive.

The requirements to make the voyage a reality...

were the qualities that make humankind unique.

Our desire to achieve...

our wherewithal and perseverance...

our willingness to sacrifice time, energy and even life...

in the long labor needed to solve the problems one by one...

over the course of the endeavor.

Most important of all was humankind's tendency...

to imagine things that are not possible.

Imagining that it could be done was the very first step taken...

in the journey from the Earth to the moon.

I was very energetic in 1902...

and I was working for the great George Melies...

who I had met at the Theatre Houdin in Paris.

He was beginning, then, to work with film...

and I was in love with the magic that came out of his camera...

which wasn't all that different from the ones...

you use right now.

Films had been of ordinary things...

like a train coming into a station...

or a wall being torn down.

He came to me one day and said...

"Jean-Luc...

I want to tell an amazing story with my camera.

I want to take people on the most amazing trip."

I thought he meant a trip to someplace literal.

To Lyon or Marseille.

Then he said...

"Let's take a voyage to the moon."

And I said...

"How about Nice? It's closer."

But the moon was in Monsieur Melies' eyes...

and this is what he designed and built...

at the Star Film Studios...

in Montreal.

Monsieur Melies had constructed...

the largest film studio in the world at that time.

Between 1896 and 1913, he produced over 100 films...

each more magical and inventive than the other.

Actors, visual effects specialists...

carpenters, costumes...

all under the direct supervision...

of Monsieur Melies.

Yes.

Too much powder, and he burns my set down.

I know. Don't use too much powder!

And too little and it will not photograph.

Too little and you're gonna waste all of our time.

I will use as much as Monsieur Melies demands.

- See a test? - Yes, please.

Could you set it off, please? One, two, three, set it off.

One, two and three.

- Idiot! That's too much. - No, it's perfect.

It's perfect. Do you hear?

That much. No more, no less.

Monsieur Melies oversaw every moment of the making of the film.

He was also the lead actor...

playing the professor, Barbenfouillis.

- Is the grinder ready? - I will find out!

One moment, sir. Is the grinder ready? Yes?

No? Please, talk to me. Thank you.

Look at this. We're already fighting the night.

Monsieur Melies, we are almost ready.

I know. I'm no longer George Melies.

I'm Professor Barbenfouillis.

Bring it up!

Up high. High.

- Is the grinder ready? - Grinder's ready.

Start the grinder!

Everyone is talking.

Anticipation in the air.

Come, the astronomers.

You are sure of yourselves...

accomplished and full of pride.

You greet the assembled and bow.

Very good.

And now, the pages enter.

Enter the pages. Please hand the telescopes to the astronomers.

Admire the telescopes, astronomers.

And exit the pages. Respectfully, nice.

And now comes Barbenfouillis.

I bow to you, sausages.

- Now I take my place above you all. - Get ready.

And slowly...

raise your telescopes above your head.

Hold it there a moment. Stop the grinder!

Melies would have us stop the film...

and run in with whatever it was that was needed...

to suddenly appear.

We make the exchange...

run back off...

- start the camera and... - Lights.

voila...

the special effect of magic on the screen.

Your telescopes have magically changed into stools.

Sit, gentlemen, and here we are.

We will create a huge cannon...

which will fire...

a hollow projectile containing myself and yourselves.

This is beginning to sound strange to you...

and you murmur about this.

And I say, this projectile...

will actually journey...

all the way from the Earth to the moon.

But you say to yourself, "This is madness"...

and you act like this is madness!

You say, "This is impossible."

And I say, "No, it is not impossible."

Come to me. Say I'm nuts.

You're nuts. You're crazy.

How dare you! I throw papers at you.

Look at this chaos.

Mayhem breaks out among the scientists...

and all this because I propose a voyage...

to the moon.

How was it?

I think it was a good one, no?

I'm the last man to walk on the moon.

Not that anyone gives a shit.

Can I say "shit" or should I watch my language on this?

I can make the claim of being the last person to set foot on the moon.

It's really how you look at it, see?

I got out of the LM after Gene did on the first E.V.A.

So that would make me the twelfth and final person...

to make footprints up there.

It's not like I get stopped at restaurants because of it.

I will bet you $50 and a box of donuts...

no one knows the names of the last two men to walk on the moon.

And I will tell you why.

Because they didn't die up there.

They flew a near-flawless mission.

They did a hell of a job up there on the moon...

and they came back in one piece.

But if you didn't get a NASA paycheck...

you never even knew their names.

Eugene Cernan was a veteran astronaut...

who walked in space on Gemini 9 in 1966.

Exhausted and overheated in his pressure suit...

he lost 15 pounds in the effort.

Gambling that the Apollo program...

would remain funded by Congress...

he held out for command of Apollo 17...

rather than take the job of lunar module pilot...

on John Young's 16 flight.

Harrison Schmitt-- or "Jack," as he is known--

went to the moon with a special relish.

The first and only scientist to go...

he was a geologist by trade...

and an astronaut by choice.

He had also been instrumental in the training of every man...

to walk on the moon before him.

He almost didn't get to go himself.

- Hey, ta da! - Congratulations.

- What? - You're going to the moon!

- What? - Apollo 17, you're on the crew.

- Yeah. - I have not heard a thing.

- Come on. - You will.

They came to their senses over there. They're sending one of us.

You'll be the first egghead on the moon.

Come on. Have a drink for once in your life.

I don't celebrate rumors.

- Oh, come on. - Come on.

Harrison Schmitt.

Yes. My sister.

No! No, I haven't heard anything. I'll let you know when I do.

Yeah. Bye.

I don't know what they're waiting for.

NASA stands for "Never absolutely sure of anything."

Harrison Schmitt.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

I will do the best job I possibly can.

Thank you.

Your drink, sir.

Gentlemen...

to the exploration of the moon.

They might have rued the day that they made the change.

I always had some strong ideas...

about where we were going on the moon...

and forcefully suggested them.

Jack had no problem picking up the phone...

and calling the President of the United States...

if he had an idea about where or what...

we should be doing with Apollo.

- Like giving us that fourth E.V.A. - The fourth E.V.A.

Where we should land.

Flights rules were not going to be rewritten...

just for me and Jack to make that last trip out.

Chris Kraft stopped me in the hallway one day...

and he pretty much told me exactly how it was going to be.

- Gene-o. - Yes, boss.

- Want to put the white scarf away? - Come again?

Lose the throttle jockey act.

I got all the memos I need on Apollo 17.

All these ideas from you and your partner.

You want an extra E.V.A. on the moon?

You're lucky you even have a mission.

Look. A lot of people think we should quit while we're ahead.

The system's already stretched to the limit.

Jesus, we're so tight on weight constraints...

we're talking about cutting the number of Band-Aids in the first aid kit.

Six Band-Aids instead of 12.

That's enough.

Here's your number one mission rule.

Tattoo this to your eyelids.

Don't take any chances. Just come back alive.

All right, nice and easy. With grace.

As he did with his theatrical productions...

Monsieur Melies designed every aspect of his film...

and was quite fanatical.

You must react with spirit and soul!

When things went wrong...

things went wrong, and he would scream.

These girls!

- Ladies, you were fine. - You're fired!

I will. You guys are fired.

When things were not so bad...

he was not so bad.

This is how it is when you are working with a genius.

But it was not during the filming...

that Melies worked his true magic.

It was later...

in the laboratory and the projection room...

where I saw he was up to something incredible...

something that had never been seen before.

A complete, fantastic story...

told in one marvelous film.

I don't know, boss. So many cuts.

So much glue, I hope it holds.

If it doesn't work, no soup for you.

Well, that's all right. It's lousy soup.

- How dare you? Is it ready? - Here goes.

There we are.

The intrepid voyagers.

Yes.

Wave to the assembled.

Climb into the projectile. It is pushed into the cannon...

by so many pretty maidens.

Yes, give us a wave.

Dissolves, superimpositions, double exposures.

Monsieur Melies was a genius.

Boss...

you are a genius.

The cannon...

ready to be fired, and boom!

Roger! The clock has started.

We have liftoff.

Apollo 17 has turned midnight into dawn.

Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt...

flying through the automated roll program of the spacecraft...

begin America's-- and perhaps all of mankind's--

final voyage to the moon.

Three men inside the command module America...

with the lunar module Challenger in tow....

journey now to the moon.

Most of the world and much of America...

views Apollo 17 as an undertaking...

either commonplace or wasteful.

Regardless...

to be here, once again, in the presence...

of such glorious force...

aimed at such a heavenly target as the moon...

one can only marvel and ask...

"How have we done this?"

"How have we sent mankind to the moon?"

Okay, Houston...

as I step down to the surface at Taurus-Littrow--

No one on the planet Earth saw Gene Cernan...

first set foot on the moon's surface.

Nor Jack Schmitt.

Unbelievable!

The Apollo 17 TV camera would not be operative...

until the lunar rover was deployed and powered up.

When it was...

crystal-clear video pictures from the surface of the moon...

were transmitted to the world by way of a television camera...

controlled from a console in Mission Control...

by Ed Fendel.

With a lag of six seconds...

the time it took for his commands to reach the moon...

and the picture to travel back to Earth...

he was the director of arguably...

the most unique television show of all time.

The ratings were nonexistent.

The networks didn't even want to cover the mission...

except on the morning shows...

and an occasional update.

In July of 1969...

the entire world stopped...

to watch Buzz and Neil...

and the one giant leap.

The picture was so bad, a lot of people couldn't even make it out.

12, the color camera went out so there was no TV.

No matter what they tried.

Apollo 13...

was a news story unlike any other in history.

But it...

takes nearly another year...

for Al Shepard to practice his golf swing.

15 and 16 had the Rover...

and the color camera.

But by this time...

no one was watching.

They'd moved on to other things.

Color television from the moon...

took a few moments of their time.

Nothing more.

Oh, bury me not

On the lone prairie

Where the coyotes howl

And the winds blow free

Okay, let's see. Where am l?

In a geologist's paradise, if I ever saw one.

I just snuck a quick peek at the drill, and it does work.

I just took time out for a snack of a little water.

- What's that? - That must be Ron.

Houston, you wanna tell Evans he's got his VHF on.

Oh, no, you won't believe it.

I did it again? Hit the wrong button on the gravimeter?

No, there goes the fender.

I caught it with my hammer. Oh, shoot.

Oh, golly. Oh, boy.

I couldn't stop myself before the damage was done.

Oh, boy. I'm gonna deploy this package here.

We're gonna have to stop here. Let me try to get that fender back on.

Otherwise the dust will cover everything.

- Is the tape under my seat? - Yeah.

Oh, man. Hey, Jack.

Just stop. You owe yourself 30 seconds...

to take a look up over the south massif...

and look at the Earth.

You seen one Earth, you've seen them all.

That's the biggest difference between Jack and me.

Every spare second that I had...

I was trying to take in everything that I was doing...

everything that I was seeing.

I'm trying to grab another look up at the Earth...

focusing on this great adventure...

that I was living in time, in space, in reality.

I mean, there it was up there...

surrounded by...

nothingness.

The darkest black imaginable.

I could see that it was nighttime in England and lunchtime in Texas...

with just a casual glance...

as though I were a passenger...

on a time machine with a big picture window in it...

just looking out.

I just couldn't get enough of it.

I was looking at the rocks.

Our time was so limited....

and the best instrument in the world for scientific observation...

is a pair of trained eyes...

and an educated brain to process information.

There we were.

This fantastic field site.

Well...

I was looking at the rocks.

I mean, when you can see the layers of geologic history...

that's what I was there for.

After extended problems with the gravimeter...

and the lunar surface experiment package...

and a time-consuming fix...

to the broken fender of the Rover...

Cernan and Schmitt were allowed to travel only half as far...

as their first E.V.A. had originally called for.

By the time they were back inside Challenger...

and repressurized to five P.S.I...

the two moon walkers had been outside...

for seven hours and 12 minutes...

almost three times longer...

than all of Neil Armstrong's and Buzz Aldrin's exploration...

of the Sea of Tranquility.

And Apollo 17 had two more moonwalks to go.

Rehearsing. Here we are.

We've touched down on the moon.

Out, everyone. Out quickly.

You're excited, can't believe where you are!

It's amazing. Look at this amazing scene.

- The mountains. - Out they come. Out.

Now, over here. Raise your arm.

Raise up. That's when we'll stop the grinder.

- Stop the grinder there. - Can we move this? Come on!

One, two, three.

- Quickly, quickly. - Don't move.

Out comes the projectile. It'll be faster, boss. Don't worry.

All right, so raise your arm. Raise your arm.

Good.

Don't move. Keep up your arms.

And we will then start the grinder.

Get out of the way. We want the grinder to see the Earth.

- We're turning again. - We want the Earth rising...

slowly...

and let's drop the mountains.

Lower the first rail.

No, first the Earth begins to rise.

First the Earth rises!

Then drop the mountains.

Then the mountains lower. Earth rise, mountains lower.

It'll be perfect tomorrow, boss. I guarantee it.

And ready volcano? Volcano!

Boom!

The volcano should be a little farther offstage. Can you get it?

Stop. You're doing a lousy job and bitching for nothing.

We'll do that. Now get up. Stretch.

Here they are. No, they will be, boss.

I promise. I guarantee it.

- They will be there. - Let will let us covers ourselves.

Special blankets for the moon.

Lay on the moon and dream of the star maidens.

And out they come, the star maidens.

When the sun is over the roof, we'll shoot the scene.

If we have the sun, boss.

Please, Lord, give us the sun.

Good morning, Challenger.

We have some special wake-up music for you...

from the old folks of the LMP at Cal Tech.

Eight miles high

Being commander has some advantages. One of those is driving the Rover.

Every time I'd go down a hill, I'd put Jack on the downslope side.

Not once did Gene-o drive with me on the uphill side.

He usually only had three wheels on the surface...

and me feeling like we were gonna tip over any minute.

Good eye.

For the second E.V.A...

Cernan and Schmitt were well rested...

and had the time-consuming chores behind them.

I think we've got another one coming here.

With ten stations scheduled...

the pair drove off over five miles...

from the safety of Challenger...

with the single-minded task of doing as much work...

in the allotted time as was humanly possible.

While the astronauts were in transit on the moon...

there was no television signal.

In Houston, Flight Director Gerry Griffin...

managed the activities through the voice contact...

of Capcom Bob Parker...

who tried to keep the astronauts on schedule.

Roland pitch should be fairly flat.

The F-stop for the 500 millimeter...

should be the same as for the 70.

Gene, you might want to take some shots of those massifs...

if they look interesting.

If they look interesting? What kind of thing is that to say?

Bob, up frame count 36 is the outcrop...

where the boulders at the top of the south massif--

Oh! Hey, here's something different.

It's a chunk of yellow-brown rock...

that apparently has several spots behind it.

To find a sample...

with such a vivid color on the surface of the moon.

That would be evidence of volcanic activity...

the one-time presence of water or oxygen.

It was exactly the kind of find...

you'd want to make on a place like the moon.

Of course, it turned out it was too good to be true.

Oh, no. What is that?

Oh, that's a reflection. Oh, that really fooled me.

It's a reflection off the mylar on the Rover.

I thought I had something there. Crazy.

Well, what the heck? I'll sample it anyway.

SCB 32 Easy is just another small fragment.

"Just another small fragment."

You bet that gave the guys in the geology backroom a jolt.

Seeing as how Jack was one of us...

we never thought he would lie to us.

The hallmark of any geologist is impeccable integrity.

But that little episode...

that had us going for a bit.

So what other things can reflect off the Rover up there?

Does it have taillights?

- Hubcaps. - Maybe he left the parking lights on.

Don't do that to us again, Jack.

Okay, Shorty is clearly a darker-rimmed crater.

The inner wall is quite blocky...

except for the western portion of it.

The floor is hummocky...

as we thought it was in the Apollo 15 photographs.

If it had been a perfect world for us geologists...

Jack would've had his own TV camera...

just for the ground science team.

Come on, Gene. Turn on the TV.

The central peak-- if you will--

or the central mound...

is very blocky, very jagged.

And the impression I have...

of the other mounds in the bottom...

is that they look like slump masses that may have come off the side.

- We got it! - Thanks, Gene. Now get out of the way.

Come on, Cernan. Move!

Parade around, Jack. Grab us a sample of that sucker.

A very large boulder of very intensely fractured rock...

right on the rim.

Where on the rim? We can't--

It looks like a finely vesicular version...

of our clinopyroxene gabbro.

It's obviously crystalline. Do you have TV?

Yes!

We have TV.

And you might brush the lens for us...

before you move out of the way.

I'm gonna take a quick pan while I'm waiting for you.

Okay.

Oh, hey.

There is orange soil.

There is orange soil here.

I knew by the tone of Jack's voice...

that this orange soil was the real thing.

We just wanted to see it on the TV.

It's all over. It's all over.

- He said it's all over the place. - Zoom in!

- Pan. Take a good look around. - Tell him to bring it to the camera.

Make sure that the sunlight's hitting it at the right angle.

- It is. I can see it from here. - It's orange.

Wait a minute. Let me pull my visor up.

It's still orange!

I'm gonna have to dig a trench here, Houston.

Boy, it's almost the same color as the LMP decal on my camera.

How can there be oxidized soil on the moon?

It looks just like oxidized desert soil.

That's exactly right.

You know, that orange, it runs in a line, Gene-o.

- Right along the rim crest. - What, circumferential?

If there was anything that looked...

like a fumarole alteration...

this is it.

That's it!

That's the volcanic event!

The bad news was that the orange was not...

a fumarole alteration, nor was it oxidized.

Now these were perfectly normal...

preliminary assumptions to make...

about an unexamined sample...

but it turned out that it was orange volcanic glass...

from a fire fountain that happened 3.5 billion years ago.

But that did not diminish anyone's excitement...

about that find, or, frankly, its importance.

I think Jack and l did as solid an E.V.A...

as anyone could have on that second time out.

Some of the best work ever done in all of Apollo.

There was one thing I really wanted to do out there though.

Well, it had to do with my daughter, Tracy.

Did he promise to bring you anything?

Well, I asked him to bring a rock back from the moon...

He said if he could, he would bring me one back.

And he said if he couldn't, he'd bring me a moonbeam.

- A what? - A moonbeam.

A moonbeam.

He's either pullin' your leg or you're pullin' mine.

That's what he said.

Before my father walked on the moon...

he told me he was gonna do something very special up there.

He said he was going to carve my initials in the lunar dust...

making me the only little girl with her name on the moon.

And that it would last for thousands and thousands of years.

Just like his footprints is what he'd say.

Of course, I was nine years old at the time...

and I had very little concept of what he was talking about.

The moon is roughly five times the size of the continent of Africa.

In all, the Apollo missions spent more than 12 days on its surface...

but less than three-and-a-half days actually exploring its mysteries.

In the 75 hours Challenger sat in the Taurus-Littrow Valley...

the crew spent 24 hours of them in scheduled rest periods.

No, I didn't do much sleeping on the moon.

No. No more than catnaps, really.

I was waking up every few hours.

I just couldn't do it.

Not that I sat up writing poetry or anything.

But the knowledge of being where I was...

kept me up and looking around.

And it wasn't because I was scared or anything.

It was just the fact that I was actually trying to do something so fantastic...

it made it impossible.

Jack, he slept like a baby...

with the sweetest dreams you can imagine, I suppose.

Mankind's final day on the moon...

came with the Earth's face having waned by 15%.

The day would bring the last seven hours of human footfall...

on the face of another world.

The longer you stay on the moon, minute by minute...

the better the chances are for something to go wrong.

Now I will tell you, without hesitation...

even with there being nothing wrong at all...

that last E.V.A. was as anxious a time...

as I ever spent in NASA.

- That's affirmed. - Okay, here comes the hatch.

- I can see daylight through it. - Okay, the hatch is full open.

With a stiff suit, I'm still at 4.5 P.S.I.

Okay, but I am out here on the porch.

Okay, I'm going down the ladder.

Godspeed, the crew of Apollo 17.

I remember my visit to Mission Control quite vividly...

for it was the day I saw the impossible.

Oh, I knew the Americans had walked on the moon.

I had seen the pictures.

But the immediacy...

of actually being there in Houston at the same time...

it did something to my consciousness that had not yet happened.

It came at a moment...

when the man operating the camera...

turned it toward the Earth...

and he zoomed in very slowly.

And the picture was-- It was so good.

I could actually make out the oceans...

and the continents and the clouds.

It suddenly hit me...

that we were looking at ourselves.

It was as if our own eyes were on the moon...

and somehow we could turn them around...

and look back down and see everything we have...

everything we know, everything we are...

all at the same time.

I wanted to run outside and wave at the moon...

and run back inside.

See if I could see myself.

Turning Point Rock was so named...

because it was the station farthest away from the Challenger...

on the final E.V.A. of Apollo 17.

What looked like in orbit to be one huge boulder...

that had skidded to a stop in the valley...

was, in fact, five different boulders...

each the size of a house.

The Turning Point is where I should have done it.

I thought later on, "If I had just put Tracy's initials on a boulder...

that would have been an incredible picture."

You know? T.D.C. in the lunar dust up there for the rest of time...

but hell, I was so tired and so busy...

the opportunity got away from me.

I don't think I can get to the top.

I just gotta get to a place...

where I can get a pan from.

Okay, I think I'll save some water.

All right.

Back on intermediate.

That cools you off real fast.

Hey, there's Challenger.

Holy smoley!

The lunar module was three miles away...

and that was our home.

We were up on the side of the north massif working.

Just two lunchbox-totin' Joes.

You can talk all you want about what it's like to go to the moon...

and to live and work on the moon.

I can tell you, I already did that.

I had a house up there.

I had a job.

I lived up there for three days.

You know, Jack, when we finish with station eight...

we will have covered this whole valley from corner to corner.

That was the idea.

But I didn't think we'd ever really quite get to that far corner.

But we are going to make it.

Son of a gun, the commander just fell down.

- You okay? - Yeah, Commander's okay.

When you're tired, when you're close to being finished...

and you think everything is going perfectly...

and you got it made...

that's when something terrible can happen.

That's when disaster can strike.

Another savage attacks and poof!

And they escape the--

and are about to leave the lunar surface.

Ah, danger.

Will they survive? Yes! They are led by Professor Barbenfouillis.

Monsieur Melies was on the precipice of celebrity and greatness...

as well as getting very, very rich.

Poof! A savage of the other world disappears.

Poof again. Poof. And again.

As was his due, he had created...

La Voyage Dans La Lune.

But then, it all came crashing down.

But they're on their way home...

and splash in the ocean.

It goes deep, deep, deep, deep, and they come up.

Yes, they come up to the surface...

and the navy brings them to safe harbor.

I'm going to take my movie in America.

Make a hundred prints of it, take them to the city of New York...

book a theater and let words of my films spread...

across this huge, rich land...

and I will make a fortune out of this.

Poor Monsieur Melies.

He did not know that Le Voyage Dans La Lune...

was already playing in America.

And he was not ever going to see a penny from it.

Agents of the American genius and thief, Monsieur Thomas Edison...

had seen the film in London.

They bribed the theater owner...

took the film into a lab...

and made copy after copy after copy of it.

The film was a sensation in America.

A fortune was made off its exhibition.

None of it-- not a penny--

going into the pockets of Monsieur George Melies.

Within a few years...

he was broke.

- We should have TV. - We're gettin' TV there, Gene-o.

- You getting it? - We've got TV.

Well, let me take a look.

With the final E.V.A. nearly completed...

Gene Cernan drove the Rover...

a few hundred feet away from the Challenger...

to its final resting place...

a parking spot where it still sits today.

He would need the clamps that held together the quick-fix fender...

for inside the LM during ascent.

A good fender, he took back as a souvenir.

Pressed for time...

and with a long walk back to the landing site...

the commander of Apollo 17 stole the luxury...

of a last look at his home on the moon...

then performed one last, very personal task.

With Mission Control reminding him time was running out...

Jack Schmitt hurried to prepare the last bags...

filled with priceless lunar samples...

for the long transport to Earth.

With the clock ticking and his life support...

diminishing with every breath...

the only scientist to ever walk on the moon...

came to a melancholy realization.

His time there was over.

We need you in the LM in one-five minutes, 15 minutes...

because of oxygen restraints.

I copy that.

I don't need my hammer anymore.

Tell them to move it along.

What we want you to do is dust and get in.

We got one-four minutes.

Let me throw the hammer.

Okay.

Let me throw the hammer, please.

It's all yours.

You deserve it. You're a geologist.

You oughta be able to be the hammer thrower.

- You ready? - Go ahead. Don't hit the LM.

Bob, this is Gene, and I'm alone on the surface.

That's why I'm the last man to walk on the moon.

Jack was already inside Challenger...

so it was just me out there.

That last footprint on the moon, check it out.

It just happens to be my boot size.

And as I take man's last step from the surface...

back home, for now...

but we believe not too long into the future.

I'd just like to say what I believe history will record.

That America's challenge of today...

has forged man's destiny of tomorrow.

And as we leave the moon at Taurus-Littrow...

we leave...

as we came...

and God willing, as we shall return...

with peace and hope...

for all mankind.

Godspeed, the crew of Apollo 17.

Descent engine override. Logic in.

Okay.

Rate scale: 25 degrees per second.

Attitude translation: four jets.

Four jets on.

Take your final look at the valley at Taurus-Littrow.

The TV camera on the Rover...

was broadcasting live pictures...

of Challenger's liftoff from the moon...

making Ed Fendel...

the most nervous man in all of NASA.

The camera on Apollo 15 wouldn't tilt up...

to follow the ascent...

and its commands for keeping Apollo 16...

were too slow.

Now with one last chance...

to televise the complete event...

the pressure was on to pan and zoom the camera...

several seconds before liftoff.

Otherwise the world would never see...

a perfect TV picture of Apollo leaving the moon.

Engine arm is ascent.

- I'm going to get the pro. - Roger.

Ninety-nine...

proceed.

Three...

two, one.

Ignition.

With the precision emblematic of its near flawless mission...

Apollo 17 embarked from the moon for the sixth and final time...

in the history of mankind.

The exploration of another world...

was successfully and safely completed...

thanks to the efforts and attention of those on Earth...

who could only look on as vicarious participants...

as the fantastic voyages came...

to a bittersweet end.

When we were back inside the command module...

President Nixon sent up a message...

congratulating us on the last exploration of the moon...

in this century.

Boy, that made me mad because we were just getting good at it.

The hardware had been proven, was getting even better...

and yet we have not been back to the moon since 1972.

We should've continued right along.

The only reason we stopped going to the moon was politics.

Sending men to the moon is dangerous.

It's also expensive. It's hard to do.

But we did it at the cost of more than just money.

If you have the time, I can list off the names...

of a couple of hundred thousand people...

who gave of themselves to make it happen...

along with the names of dozens of people who gave their lives.

Understand...

that the moon is what the Earth once was...

before the ancient craters were erased by the wind...

and the rain and the geologic forces.

As such, the moon is a time machine...

that can take us back...

and tell us what our home was once like...

what it was made out of...

and how it came to be...

that we're all living here.

I wish...

I had been living up there on the moon...

these past 25 years...

wandering around with my hammer and a sack...

and a thermos or two of coffee.

I'm very glad to have been alive when we went to the moon.

I am of the generation that witnessed it...

that actually saw it live on television.

And what we saw on television...

from the forbidding and desolate surface of the moon...

was our own world...

both beautiful and troubled.

Standing on the moon, looking up at the Earth...

you see that the promise and potential of our world...

is as obvious as it is magnificent.

And for the people who live on that green and blue ball...

there is no difficulty they cannot overcome...

no solution they cannot grasp...

no distance that they cannot travel.

Me standing in the valley of Taurus-Littrow...

is proof of that.

What we learned about the moon...

is not nearly as important as our going there.

Apollo 8.

Witnesses to the first earthrise...

in the consciousness of man.

Apollo 17.

Gene Cernan takes that remarkable photo...

of Jack Schmitt standing on the moon...

with the Earth over his shoulder.

See, that's why we went to the moon.

To take those pictures.

We didn't go there to conquer it or claim it...

or simply beat the Russians to it.

Sure, we wanted to find out what the moon was made of...

to satisfy questions of science...

that have plagued us since the dawn of man.

But more than anything else...

we went to the moon...

to see if we could make the journey...

because if we can do that...

if we can voyage...

from the Earth to the moon...

then there's hope for all of us...

because we can do anything.

William Bradford, speaking in 1630...

of the founding of the Plymouth Bay colony...

said that all great and honorable actions...

are accompanied with great difficulty.

And both must be enterprised...

and overcome...

with answerable courage.

If this capsule history of our progress...

teaches us anything...

it is that man...

in his quest for knowledge and progress...

is determined and cannot be deterred.

The exploration of space will go ahead.

Whether we join in it or not...

we need to be a part of it.

We need to lead it.

For the eyes of the world...

now look into space...

to the moon and to the planets beyond.

Our leadership in science and industry...

our hopes for peace and security...

our obligations to ourselves...

as well as others...

all require us to make this effort...

to solve these mysteries...

to solve them for the good of all men.

There is no strife, no prejudice...

no national conflict in outer space as yet.

Its hazards are hostile to us all.

Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade...

and do the other things...

not because they are easy...

but because they are hard.

Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept...

one we are unwilling to postpone...

and one we intend to win.

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