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Astronauts Who have Died

Itssoeasy

The commander of the last moon mission has died at the age of 82.

The quote he said as he prepared to climb back into the LM for the last time

I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [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."

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josip

So who's still alive of the moonwalkers?
Aldrin, any others?
Did a lot of them die early on?

Itssoeasy

Aldrin and Michael Collins from Apollo 11 are still alive

Pete Conrad is dead from Apollo 12 and Richard Gordon is alive and Alan bean I think is still alive.
Apollo 13 didn't land on the moon but both Jim Lovell and Fred Haise are alive. Jack swiggert is dead though.
Apollo 14 none of this crew is alive unfortunately
Apollo 15 Dave Scott and al worden are alive
Apollo 16 John young(a legend) and Ken mattingly and Charlie duke are all still alive
Apollo 17 with the death of gene cernan only Harrison Schmitt is alive of the final crew.

Edit: Alan bean is very much alive.

coylemj

He was one of only three men who travelled all the way to the moon twice .....

Eugene Cernan was on Apollo 10 (lunar orbit, no landing, final rehearsal for Apollo 11) and Apollo 17 (last lunar landing). Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walked on the lunar surface.

John Young also flew on Apollo 10 and was on Apollo 16 - he and Charlie Duke walked on the moon.

Jim Lovell has the dubious distinction of being the only man who flew to the moon twice (Apollo 8 & 13) but never walked on the lunar surface.

JupiterKid

RIP Eugene Cernan. It feels like the end of an era when the last man who walked on the moon is no longer with us. And a manned Mars mission is still a long way away. Sort of sad and depressing.:(

Knifey Spoony

There's a great documentary, The Last Man on the Moon, about him up on the Irish Netflix at the moment. Been a while since I watched it, but it covers the early days of the Apollo program right up to his experiences on the Moon.

ankaragucu

Only six of the twelve moon walkers are still with us.Aldrin,Bean,Duke,Young,Schmitt and Scott.I think all of them are 80 or over at this point.Buzz is 86!

Beeker

A day will come when nobody left alive will have walked on the Moon. Sad that we have not been back in over 44 years.

josip

Beeker wrote: »

A day will come when nobody left alive will have walked on the Moon.

There will probably still be some of the original walkers alive in 10 years time.
I'd expect that within that timeframe the Chinese will have managed it.

Wibbs

josip wrote: »

I'd expect that within that timeframe the Chinese will have managed it.

Don't bet on it J. They've made it into near Earth orbit on largely Russian based stuff, the Moon is a very different prospect and one that requies a scaling up of the Chinese programme way beyond anything they've done so far. Going further out, geostationary orbit is around 40,000 miles away, but the Moon is nearly ten times that. By comparison, near Earth orbit is a doddle.

Itssoeasy

http://go.nasa.gov/2koVk9F Gene cernan funeral service is on at 8:30pm Irish time in case anyone wants to watch it.

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

Don't bet on it J. They've made it into near Earth orbit on largely Russian based stuff, the Moon is a very different prospect and one that requies a scaling up of the Chinese programme way beyond anything they've done so far. Going further out, geostationary orbit is around 40,000 miles away, but the Moon is nearly ten times that. By comparison, near Earth orbit is a doddle.

Distance isn't really an issue. Delta V is.

A reminder that the end of Apollo anyone going into space has had to use either the Shuttle or Soyuz spacecraft and the Shuttle's wasn't in use most of the time and wasn't rated for much above LEO anyway. Soyuz was originally developed for moon shot back in the day.

Chinese have a space station so can do extended time in orbit and docking. They've also landed a small lander, and presumably have learnt from the rovers early failure.

It's all down to budget. Chinese non-commercial space program is costing about what NASA are spending trying to bodge something together from Shuttle leftovers and Europe's ATV. If the Chinese start throwing big money at space expect results.

Capt'n Midnight

http://explainxkcd.com/893/

Itssoeasy

I didn't want to make another thread but CM pilot of Apollo 12 Dick Gordon died yesterday aged 88. He flew on Gemini 11 and Apollo 12. Another member of a very select and declining group of humans who have traveled to the moon.

May he RIP.

Roger_007

It is sobering to reflect that the Apollo missions ended all of 44 years ago. At the time most people would have thought that within 20 years of that event we would all be going on routine trips to the Moon, and beyond, given how rapidly space travel had developed in the previous 10 years.
The sobering truth is that very little new or innovative developments have taken place in the technology of space travel in the intervening years. We are still depending on the same rocket-based methods to get into space.
There is also a different attitude to risk nowadays. Space travel, particularly beyond earth's orbit, is inherently very risky. It is also more difficult for governments to justify the huge expense of space travel.
So I doubt if any human will be walking on the moon, (or any other planet), anytime soon, if ever.

mickmackey1

Itssoeasy wrote: »

I didn't want to make another thread but CM pilot of Apollo 12 Dick Gordon died yesterday aged 88. He flew on Gemini 11 and Apollo 12. Another member of a very select and declining group of humans who have traveled to the moon.

May he RIP.

He openly expressed his disappointment at not reaching the surface - "The name of the game as far as I was concerned was to walk on the moon"

josip

Roger_007 wrote: »

It is sobering to reflect that the Apollo missions ended all of 44 years ago. At the time most people would have thought that within 20 years of that event we would all be going on routine trips to the Moon, and beyond, given how rapidly space travel had developed in the previous 10 years.
The sobering truth is that very little new or innovative developments have taken place in the technology of space travel in the intervening years. We are still depending on the same rocket-based methods to get into space.
There is also a different attitude to risk nowadays. Space travel, particularly beyond earth's orbit, is inherently very risky. It is also more difficult for governments to justify the huge expense of space travel.
So I doubt if any human will be walking on the moon, (or any other planet), anytime soon, if ever.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but as with all human exploration, after the initial prestige of being the first, future exploration will only happen if there's money to be made.
The US threw ridiculous amounts of money at the moon landings just because Korolev had been repeatedly rubbing their faces in it with his one trick R7.
I think a lot of technical progress has been made in the intervening years developing technology that will allow for sustainable exploration.

ps200306

I think what's happened in the intervening years is that people have realised the pointlessness of manned space travel. There are no habitats out there suitable for us. There is no scientific research we can do that can't be done much more safely, and therefore cheaply, by robots. Contra Musk, there is no urgent requirement for us to establish a colony on Mars or anywhere else. There is no possibility of us going further afield to the stars in the next century, probably the next millennium, and quite possibly ever.

The only factor even worth a second thought is the romance of the idea of space travel, and therefore it's use for leveraging public support for funding scientific research. The best way around that is probably to keep promising "we'll do something soon(-ish)", like Bush Jr. and Obama did. Then quietly drop the idea.

Itssoeasy

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Itssoeasy wrote: »

I didn't want to make another thread but CM pilot of Apollo 12 Dick Gordon died yesterday aged 88. He flew on Gemini 11 and Apollo 12. Another member of a very select and declining group of humans who have traveled to the moon.

May he RIP.

He openly expressed his disappointment at not reaching the surface - "The name of the game as far as I was concerned was to walk on the moon"

I find it hard to believe that a CM pilot at that point in the Apollo mission wouldn't know the score. The CM pilot had the best seat in the history of maned space flight.

Beeker

After Apollo 12 he was backup Commander of Apollo 15 and would have walked on the moon during Apollo 18 in 1973 until that flight was cancelled.

Itssoeasy

josip wrote: »

I agree with a lot of what you say, but as with all human exploration, after the initial prestige of being the first, future exploration will only happen if there's money to be made.
The US threw ridiculous amounts of money at the moon landings just because Korolev had been repeatedly rubbing their faces in it with his one trick R7.
I think a lot of technical progress has been made in the intervening years developing technology that will allow for sustainable exploration.

Well even to watch the Apollo lauches and program you can't fail to be in awe of the whole thing and then to have the space shuttle follow it can't have helped. The space shuttle really wasn't a good spacecraft. The SRBs and ET caused directly or lead to(I know challenger didn't break up because of the O-ring failure) the loss of two shuttles and 14 crew members.

And I say that as a person for whom the space shuttle was my generations Apollo.

Capt'n Midnight

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Well even to watch the Apollo lauches and program you can't fail to be in awe of the whole thing and then to have the space shuttle follow it can't have helped. The space shuttle really wasn't a good spacecraft. The SRBs and ET caused directly or lead to(I know challenger didn't break up because of the O-ring failure) the loss of two shuttles and 14 crew members.

And I say that as a person for whom the space shuttle was my generations Apollo.

It was pork barrelling.

To justify the cost they needed to launch lots more satellites. And that meant the military, and they demanded that the shuttle be big enough to launch KH spy satellites. So most flights meant an extra hundred tonnes to orbit. And the fun thing is when the military got control of their space flight again they used the tiny X-37 which wasn't all that dissimilar to an unmanned Dynasoar.

Anyway some of the SRB sections were used up to seven times.
Compare to liquid fuel rocket motors they are little more than cylinders made from 13mm thick steel.

There is almost nothing left of the shuttle legacy except the money pit that is the SLS. They are spending billions developing a variant that uses FIVE segments instead of the Shuttle ones that used FOUR segments.

Yes some of the engines shut down during flight but I can't help feel it would have been easier to just re-engineer the Saturn V with today's materials and technology.

Forget making it lighter, just make it cheaper. Nowadays we have 3D printers, friction welding , CNC machines that weren't possible back then, better materials in the sense that you can replace some of the exotics with modern commercial alternatives. You can buy most of the electronics off the shelf from Airbus Space.

Then again if you assemble your rocket in low earth orbit from 10 - 20 tonne modules and then send your humans up to it then there's no shortage of launch systems to choose from.

Things that might have been - Skylab could have been built from a Saturn V stage II , 1182 cubic meters of pressurised volume in the hydrogen tank, compared to the ISS which only has 916

Itssoeasy

Again didn't want to make another thread but John young has died.

John young flew on Gemini 3 and 10, and on Apollo 10 and 16. He was commander of the first shuttle mission STS 1and also flew on STS 9.

The word legend is thrown around a lot but John Young was a legend and to see him get off the first shuttle after landing and to see him walk around the shuttle and see him as enthusiastic after as he probably was on his fight flight was great to see. May he RIP.

mickmackey1

Wow, you must have a personal hotline. Not on any of the major sites yet.

Itssoeasy

mickmackey1 wrote: »

Wow, you must have a personal hotline. Not on any of the major sites yet.

It's on the NASA twitter account and other NASA astronauts

mickmackey1

Yep, confirmed now. Only 5 of the 12 Moonwalkers left. R.I.P.

Beeker

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Again didn't want to make another thread but John young has died.

John young flew on Gemini 3 and 10, and on Apollo 10 and 16. He was commander of the first shuttle mission STS 1and also flew on STS 9.

The word legend is thrown around a lot but John Young was a legend and to see him get off the first shuttle after landing and to see him walk around the shuttle and see him as enthusiastic after as he probably was on his fight flight was great to see. May he RIP.

I agree he was one of the true legends. I met him in 1999 he was a gentleman, what a shame to see the Apollo crews dying away ever so faster now, a day will arrive when none of them will be left and our adventures on the moon will truly be history.

mickmackey1

Beeker wrote: »

our adventures on the moon will truly be history.

I think there's a real chance the Chinese will go back before 2030.

Beeker

mickmackey1 wrote: »

I think there's a real chance the Chinese will go back before 2030.

Yes it looks that way at the moment which I think and hope will spur the US and ESA to do the same.

coylemj

With the passing of Gene Cernan and now John Young, Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 & 13) is the only surviving astronaut who went to the Moon twice.

Robert Power

Rest in peace Gene