NOVEMBER 19th - Dwellers of the Moon



On this day in 1969, the Apollo 12 mission landed on the moon, making astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean the third and fourth human beings to walk on the surface of the moon. People remember Apollo 11 because it was first and Apollo 13 because Houston, they had a problem and they made a movie about it with Tom Hanks. Though some people remember it being struck by lightning after launch, Apollo 12 sort of gets lost in the mix. And unless you are a big From the Earth to the Moon fan, Apollo’s 14-17 are also largely overlooked. Reinforces my point from November 17th that circumstance and surrounding influence the weight of a moment, doesn’t it? These things are universal, man. Which is really quite sad. In the history of mankind only 12 people have ever stepped foot on a celestial body other than Earth. Rough estimates are that 108 billion people have existed on Earth. 12 out of that 108 billion walked on the moon. I’m no math whiz, but that ain’t a high percentage. What is perhaps even sadder is that all of these men are either dead or octogenarians, meaning that sooner rather than later Earth will revert to a place where no one has walked on the moon. There are iPhones and iPads and interwebs and a tremendous amount of information being shared on a daily basis. Technological advances abound in our current society. But the last time anybody was on the moon was in 1972. Not saying we need a Lunar Space Station up there, but we might just want to go back and make sure no Transformers landed there in the last 40 years. So in appreciation of Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John Young, Charles Duke Jr., Jack Schmitt, and Gene Cernan, and possibly influenced a tad by the trippiness of Interstellar, I celebrate the ridiculously precious few (Neil and Buzz too) who have become dwellers of the moon, and hope that more will join their crew.

That rhymed.

This day has been Marked.

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