He and others explain: To get a prime mission, work came first, above all else. Cernan notes that about 60 percent of the astronauts wound up divorced (him included). Cernan's devil-may-care attitude toward life seemed to suit him well for this type of work, as it did his colleagues.īut it took its toll in other ways, as well. You arrive at the pinnacle of your profession - but you arrive with the knowledge that you could be killed at any moment, because you are doing things man has never done. I said, 'I know, Mike, but you've got to tell me.' And he did." She can still barely choke out the words: "I knew, I knew, I knew right away. A fire on the launch pad had killed her husband, Roger, and two other Apollo astronauts. 27, 1967, when astronaut Michael Collins arrived at her door. Then there is Martha Chaffee, who lived down the street from the Cernans. But the problems they solved on the fly, as it were, paved the way for the success of Apollo 11's moon landing, when Cernan's close friend Neil Armstrong made his one small leap for man, one giant leap for mankind. So Cernan flew the mission - one fraught with problems, as was Apollo 10, Cernan's next mission. The point is driven home when we see, for instance, footage of the wreckage of the plane that killed Charlie Bassett and Elliott See, the Gemini 9 crew for which Cernan and his partner served as backup. These men were brilliant, and they were brave. (Some of the old Kodachrome snapshots from when the astronauts let their hair down, so to speak, as most had crew cuts, would fit right in with any of the latest selfies.)īut make no mistake. Old friends and colleagues (and his ex-wife) make it clear that Cernan was a good-time guy, a talented pilot and a bit of a wild man. What do you think of when you see it? Without question, Cernan's thoughts and memories are different than those of all but a handful of people, the lucky few who walked its surface when we were still reaching for the stars.įrom there, Craig and Cernan walk us through what led to the astronaut's mission. He looks like any other cowboy sitting in the stands. The film begins with Cernan, now 81, watching a rodeo in Texas.
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Thus the film, in part about Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan, who is indeed the subject of the title, is unexpectedly moving, both as a reminder of what we once accomplished and of what we no longer seem capable of. When reminded of the herculean achievement of sending men into space, landing them on the moon and having them walk around for a few days, the obvious lack of a shared mission is overwhelming, and not a little sad. What happened to us? That's not a question director Mark Craig's documentary asks explicitly. "The Last Man on the Moon" is one of those movies we didn't realize we needed, but turns out to be just the thing for our fractured, cynical times.