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Rusty was the first Lunar Module pilot and the first to test the PLSS in space.
He also trained in this very crater in the early days of Apollo. More photos below.
10 responses to “Hiking Meteor Crater with Rusty Schweickart of Apollo 9”
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At the entrance to this crater are some vintage photos of the Apollo training. I brought him over and asked if he could please identify some of the memorable people in these photos:
That’s Rusty in the cowboy white hat looking to the left.And here you have Gene Cernan on the left in red, Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1) in the middle in white, and Charlie Bass on the right:
This is very cool. Against a backdrop of a wall of all of the American’s who have flown in space, in order, Rusty is with Carolyn Shoemaker, the co-discoverer of comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9, and the person who has discovered more comets than anyone
on Earth:
Rusty’s name is just to the left of her sleeve. She first visited this crater when she was five, perhaps providing a muse for her future work.Astronaut Ed Lu shows us a comparison of Meteor Crater and the Apollo 16 destination:
And an update to my earlier flickr post on Rusty and Ed and the B612 Foundation from our dinner discussing 2011AG5: folks in a 40km band in Southern Brazil might not be too happy to know that the odds are now up to 1/500 that they bite it on Feb 5, 2040 at 3pm… unless someone steps up and assumes responsibility for protecting the planet.
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A couple of icons there! Some more ammo from just this week:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/05/30/two-small-asteroids-bu...
Of course, the Tunguska event is even more sobering. Carnac the Magnificent says the answer is "Within the next 100 years". ๐Meteor Crater is impressive, but difficult to image from the ground. Your aerial shot is great. I had a snap I took from the air in the winter of 1966, or so, but can’t find at the moment. Picture it with snow. ๐ My pic from 2004:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pegleg000/244366693/in/photostream -
What a fun trip and yes, being able to see it from above and with all these people facilitating incredible research and thinking about our planet as a whole, its challenges, any potential threats-opportunities as one organism is already saving the world on a micro scale:) also heard it from my physical therapist lately – staying at the hotel is a blessing in disguise for you…great way to look at things…meteor could be a blessing in disguise for us all:D
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And the only RED HELMETS I’ve ever seen flown on a EVA was with him and Dave Scott during the APollo 9 EVA.cool color!
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Cloning is cool.
P.S. A flickr search reminded me that my Mom was born near a meteor crater…
Oh, and a cool description by Rusty of his thoughts and emotions while circling the Earth, a short film by David Hoffman.
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I just reread the list of priorities I heard at the Russian Federal Space Agency, and asteroid protection was there, top of the list…
And while researching the Apollo Goodwill Disc, I found this quote from a 2001 interview at JSC:
"it’s so small, it’s very colorful — you know, you see an ocean and gaseous layer, a little bit, just a tiny bit, of atmosphere around it. And, compared with all the other celestial objects — which, in many cases, are much more massive, more terrifying — it looks like it couldn’t put up a very good defense against a celestial onslaught." โ Neil Armstrong
Getting a good visual of Meteor Crater from above:
And news:
And the pace of progress in the discovery of NEOs using terrestrial techniques:
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