The Moon Page #5

---

parking lot and there was the moon.

And you could see

the little dark smudge,

over on the right side of the moon,

which is the Sea of Tranquillity,

and you knew

that there were two men -

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin -

by that time trying to sleep

in their lunar module

on the surface of that smudge

that you can see from Houston.

Over the next three years, five

more missions landed on the moon.

Each one was more ambitious

than the last.

Whereas Armstrong and Aldrin had only taken a

few tentative steps from the lunar module,

the astronauts on later missions

travelled miles across the surface.

They spent days at a time on the

moon, visiting different locations,

collecting samples

of rock and soil,

and setting up

scientific experiments.

Guess what we just found?

I think we found what we came for.

Just old rock, eh? Yes, sir.

But down on Earth,

with each mission,

the public interest

was starting to wane.

By the time it came to Apollo 17,

NASA even had to pay the American

TV networks to cover the mission.

By the fourth or fifth time

that we had gone to the moon,

it was probably

page two or three news.

You know,

it certainly wasn't headline..

There is more soil!

People were getting bored

with going to the moon.

Once you've seen astronauts

collect rocks for a few times,

it ceases to fascinate.

Going to the moon had been done.

And there was a feeling that

it was now time to do other things.

There's a state of apathy in the United

States now. People just don't care.

I think that we are spending

too much money on the moon.

I think they could use the time, energy and

money better here in the United States.

There's lots of room

for improvement here.

Rather than spend all that money exploring

space when people are starving here,

that money could be put to very

good use in improving life here.

When we finally got there,

it turned out our moon

didn't harbour life or even water.

It was not the home of the Gods

or rampaging herds of bison.

It was a barren and bleak place -

a dead rock in the sky.

We'd built it up in our imagination

for tens of thousands of years.

And the disappointment

was crushing.

People thought maybe...

there were people alive

on the moon,

maybe there are things up there.

But what we learned when we got

there is what we saw was the case.

It's a very cold place

and it's desolate and it's not capable

of supporting life as we know it.

Hey, team...

I was strolling

on the moon one day...

When astronaut Gene Cernan stepped off

the lunar surface for the last time,

it was no giant leap for mankind,

but the last stumble

of a dying era.

NASA cancelled

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes