It is really important to me that all of you learn about Al Bean, astronaut on Apollo 12 and the fourth man to walk on the moon, who after 20 years in the US Navy and 18 years with NASA during which he spent 69 days in space and more than 10 hours doing EVAs on the moon , retired to become a painter.
He is my favorite astronaut for any number of reasons, but he’s also one of my favorite visual artists.
Like, look at this stuff????
It’s all so expressive and textured and colorful! He literally painted his own experience on the moon! And that’s just really fucking cool to me!
Just look at this! This is one of my absolute favorite emotions of all time. Is Anyone Out There? is like the ultimate reaction image. Any time I have an existential crisis, this is how I picture myself.
And then there’s this one:
The Fantasy
For all of the six Apollo missions to land on the moon, there was no spare time. Every second of their time on the surface was budgeted to perfection: sleeping, eating, putting on the suits, entering and exiting the LEM, rock collection, setting up longterm experiments to transmit data back to Earth, everything. These timetables usually got screwed over by something, but for the most part the astronauts stuck to them.
The crew of Apollo 12 (Pete Conrad, Al Bean, and Dick Gordon) had other plans. Conrad and Bean had snuck a small camera with a timer into the LEM to take a couple pictures together on the moon throughout the mission. They had hidden the key for the timer in one of the rock collection bags, with the idea being to grab the key soon after landing, take some fun photos here and there, and then sneak the camera back to Earth to develop them. They had practiced where they would hide the key and how to get it out from under the collected rocks back on Earth dozens of times.
But when they got to the moon, the key was nowhere to be found. Al Bean spent precious time digging through the collection bags before he called it off. The camera had been pushing their luck anyways, he couldn’t afford to spend anymore time not on the mission objectives. Conrad and Bean continued the mission as per the NASA plan while Dick Gordon orbited overhead.
Fast forward to the very end of the mission. Bean and Conrad are doing last checks of the LEM before they enter for the last time and depart from the moon. As Bean is stowing one of the collection bags, the camera key falls out. The unofficially planned photo time has come and gone, and he tosses the key over his shoulder to rest forever on the surface of the moon.
This painting, The Fantasy, is that moment. There have never been three people on the moon at the same time, there was never an unofficial photo shoot on the moon, this picture could never have happened.
“The most experienced astronaut was designated commander, in charge of all aspects of the mission, including flying the lunar module. Prudent thinking suggested that the next-most-experienced crew member be assigned to take care of the command module, since it was our only way back home. Pete had flown two Gemini flights, the second with Dick as his crewmate. This left the least experienced - me - to accompany the commander on the lunar surface.
"I was the rookie. I had not flown at all; yet I got the prize assignment. But not once during the three years of training which preceded our mission did Dick say that it wasn’t fair and that he wished he could walk on the moon, too. I do not have his unwavering discipline or strength of character.
"We often fantasized about Dick’s joining us on the moon but we never found a way. In my paintings, though, I can have it my way. Now, at last, our best friend has come the last sixty miles.” - Al Bean, about TheFantasy.
There’s also Alexei Leonov, writer and artist and first person to conduct a spacewalk!
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
I’m gonna bake a moon themed cake for this and surround it with some of my plush wolves so they can awoo at the moon :D
how do you think kojima felt when people guessed the twist in MGSV from the first trailer two years before the game came out, based solely on the fact that Venom Snake was vaping
Members of the Kennedy Space Center control room team rise from their consoles with nervous anticipation to witness Neil Armstrong’s landing of Eagle, the lunar module, on the surface of the moon in July 1969.
Armstrong would later reflect that landing was by far his biggest concern, saying “the unknowns were rampant,” and “there were just a thousand things to worry about.”
While the tiny, fragile Apollo lunar lander descended rapidly to the Moon’s surface, its guidance computer disturbed the crew with several unexpected alarms. Including a 1202, which they had never simulated in training.
Turns out they had overshot the planned landing zone. The Eagle was coming in ‘long’ or downrange, overshooting the predicted landing zone.
Just after Buzz Aldrin calls out the altitude, “700 feet”, Armstrong replies: “Pretty rocky area.” They were confronted with a crater field and boulders measuring 10-15 feet across, so Armstrong leveled off at about 400 feet to find a better spot to land.
With a rapidly diminishing fuel supply, they would soon reach the 60-second mark when they would have to abort the mission.
“We heard the call of 60 seconds, and a low-level light came on. That, I’m sure, caused concern in the control center,” Aldrin recalled. “They probably normally expected us to land with about two minutes of fuel left. And here we were, still a hundred feet above the surface, at 60 seconds.”
Just after Armstrong asks “Okay, how’s the fuel?” and Aldrin replies “Eight percent”, Amstrong declares “Okay. Here’s a…looks like a good area here.”
In the final seconds of the white-knuckle descent, the four-legged lunar module made it to the dusty surface.
Aldrin: “Contact Light.” That meant at least one of the probes hanging from three of the craft’s footpads had touched the surface – they had landed on a site they would call “Tranquility Base”.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here,” said Armstrong. “The Eagle has landed.”
“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you down,” came the reply from Charlie Duke in mission control. “You got a bunch of guys down here about to turn blue.”
So as an Antarctic expert I need to add to this that we had not in fact been to Antarctica when it was named. The ancient Greeks decided that because there was an Arctic at the top of the world, with bears, there had to be an opposite at the other end, without bears. Which is kind of ridiculous except that the fuckers were dead on
A writer, musician, and artist. I love reading and discovering new music and food, so feel free to talk to me about any of those! I'm in lots of different fandoms and always want to find out about new ones. INTJ. I also post a lot about my faith and always like talking about God with anyone who needs encouragement in their faith life. Happily taken by the amazing and gorgeous @wisegirlandseaweedbrainforever, we’ve been dating for over five years now!
