Apollo Xll Gear

From the time of our birth, humans have felt a primordial urge to explore -- to blaze new trails, map new lands, and answer profound questions about ourselves and our universe. The events that took place between 1968 and 1972, four years that, as time passes, seem all the more remarkable for human history. During those years 24 men went to the Moon, three of them (Lovell, Cernan and Young) twice. Twelve of them orbited silently above the bleak lunar landscape, and three others were whipped around the Moon in a "free-return trajectory" in a desperate attempt to return to Earth after an explosion aboard their spacecraft. Twelve of the 24 lunar voyagers actually landed, spending in total some 300 hours on the surface, of which 80 hours were outside the lunar module with "boots on the ground" or actually driving around the spacecraft environs. These events seem incredible to us even now, as NASA makes plans to return humans to the Moon almost a half century later. When the Apollo 11 crew landed on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, they stayed a little less than a day, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin traveled less than a half mile on foot. The last crew on Apollo 17 landed on the Taurus-Littrow highlands on December 11, 1972 and stayed for three days during which Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan traveled some 19 miles in the lunar roving vehicle. Though human footprints are well preserved at the six landing sites, and rover tracks surround three of them, not a step has been taken on the lunar surface since that time. The year 2008 will be a year of 50th anniversaries for space exploration. Following in the wake of Sputnik I and Sputnik II, on January 31, 1958 the United States launched Explorer 1 on the Army's Jupiter-C (Juno) rocket. The Navy's Vanguard followed on March 17. On July 29 President Eisenhower signed legislation creating NASA, which became operational on October 1, 1958. (Click on the Apollo Gear logo above to visit the Official Website of Apollo 12 Astronaut Dick Gordon) Excerpt above from: The Voyages of Apollo by NASA's Chief Historian, Steven J. Dick Visit our other Apollo Gear shops - www.cafepress.com/apollo13gear www.cafepress.com/apollo11gear Buy Richard Gordon Apollo 12 photography on 16 x 20 posters - www.cafepress.com/OnToCopernicus www.cafepress.com/IntrepidLanding www.cafepress.com/EarthSunEclipse www.cafepress.com/apolloearthrise Buy these posters autographed by Richard Gordon at www.dickgordon.com