Alan Bean 1932-2018
June 2018 :
We’re very quickly losing our greatest era in modern history. Another one of the 12 astronauts to walk on the Moon has recently died: Alan Bean, 86, a Navy test pilot who made his first trip into space November 14, 1969, on Apollo 12, four months after the first Apollo 11 landing with Armstrong and Aldrin.
Bean next became the commander of the second crewed expedition to Skylab, America’s first space station, in July of 1973. In all, Bean totaled 69 days, 15 hours and 45 minutes in space.
His first trip, the Apollo 12 with Charles “Pete” Conrad and Richard “Dick” Gordon, though, almost ended badly, as their booster was struck twice by lightning, knocking out their power and garbling their communication with Mission Control. Fortunately, a flight controller recalled there was a separate switch within the craft, which saved the mission. Once on the Moon, in addition to feeling Bean was able to “hop like a bunny,” he and Conrad played Frisbee, probably opening the door to Alan Shepard’s golf game when he set down on the Moon during Apollo 14. Bean and Conrad also witnessed an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth, which Bean described as “the most spectacular sight of the whole flight.”
Bean was unique in his background, as, when he retired from his astronaut duties, he spent the next four decades attempting to interpret what he had seen and felt by means of paint. He believed he had the skill to interpret his memories of the Moon, calling it a great human adventure that should be memorialized. To personalize his works, he embedded tiny pieces of Moon dust he took from the sole of a boot he wore and the head of a geology hammer he had used during his lunar visit at the Ocean of Storms. His online collection lists over 160 paintings, about a quarter of which have been exhibited at Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
His awards as both an astronaut and as an artist are numerous, and he was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2010.
With Bean’s passing, there are now only four living members of the elite Apollo Moonwalkers: Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Davis Scott, Charles Duke, and Harrison Schmidt, all of whom are in their 80s.
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