The last man on the moon

It was 40 years ago today that Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt became the last men to walk on the moon. Even then, space flight and moon walks were starting to get to be ho-hum affairs, but people still recognized the name Gene Cernan.

He was one of only 12 humans to walk on the moon. He’s the only human who approached a moon landing twice (his first, Apollo 10, was a test of the lunar lander, but it did not land).

He’s almost 79 now and pretty soon, there won’t be any humans alive who’ve walked on the moon, and not quite as soon — we hope — there won’t be any humans on terra firma who recall when one did. That’s a fact which leads us to wonder whether a future generation will return to being awed when one does?

Whatever happened to Cernan? Funny you should ask.

Last summer over at Oshkosh, a kid from North Carolina got a free flight on a B-17 because he sold eggs to raise the money to travel to the big air show there.

Check out who greeted the kid when he got off the plane. Gene Cernan. “Dream big and go make it happen,” he told the young man, almost as if he had something specific in mind.