Try looking at a mini bike. He likes to ride with his father.
He hasn't had much of a chance of that lately. You see his father was away on a trip for two weeks.
Jamie is John's older sister. She's 13. In the eighth grade, she's a good student.
Spends a lot of her time doing homework. Tracy lives nearby. She's nine years old in the fourth grade.
Likes horseback riding and Barbie dolls and Christmas shopping.
Her father was away too on a, I guess you'd call it a business trip.
It's been an exciting time for these kids. Not because their fathers were gone, but because of where their fathers had gone.
Their fathers had gone on a journey to the moon.
Hello, I'm Walter Cronkite and I'm here with my space sidekick, Wally Schirra.
For the past two weeks, we've been reporting the adventures of Apollo 17, man's last trip to the moon, at least for a while.
It's been the most beautiful space shot yet. The dramatic nighttime launch, the clearest pictures we've seen from the moon,
and a perfect splashdown in the Pacific four days ago.
But we started to worry that many of you might not have seen those dramatic events because so many of them happened late at night or during school hours.
And that's why we're here today, to show you what you may have missed, to let you see and hear the making of history.
Someday, perhaps, you can tell your children and grandchildren what it was like.
CBS News presents Challenger Has Landed, the adventures of Apollo 17.
This broadcast is sponsored by General Mills, makers of the famous Big G cereals.
Here is Walter Cronkite.
It takes a special type of man to ride on one of those Saturn V rockets.
For one thing, it takes a brave man, but also a man of exceptional training and skills.
Three such men were chosen to form the crew of Apollo 17.
Their spacecraft is tiny compared to the overall size of the rocket.
It's really three rockets stacked one on top of each other, with the spacecraft up on top.
The whole thing is taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Several hours before launch, the Apollo 17 astronauts were helped into their space suits.
It's a chance to see what they look like before they get those helmets on.
The commander of the mission is Navy Captain Gene Cernan.
He went to the neighbor of the moon once before, more than three years ago, when he flew within 10 miles of the moon's surface.
At this time, he'll land and walk there.
He's married. He has one daughter, Tracy.
We saw her Christmas shopping just a short while ago, you remember.
And she talked with correspondent Mort Dean about her father's trip.
You ask your father for a Christmas present, something to bring back from the moon?
Yes, sir. I asked him for a moon rock, and he said that he probably wouldn't be able to bring a moon rock to me because they all check them out.
So he'd bring a moon bean. He'd send me a moon bean.
Another Navy man, a commander, Ron Evans, will be the command module pilot.
He's the one man who won't land on the moon, but he'll have enough work to keep him busy in orbit around the moon.
John and Jamie Evans have been trying to get used to that idea.
Well, when we first got the message that he was going on a flight, we were down in Acapulco, and he said, just think, it was that night.
And he said, just think, a year from now, you know, I'll be up there.
The third astronaut's a bachelor, Harrison Schmidt. His friends call him Jack.
He's a scientist. In fact, he's the first professional scientist to go along on a space flight, and he had to learn to fly jet planes first.
His field is geology, the study of rocks.
Ahead of these men was a journey of a quarter million miles and back, and some new world records in manned exploration of the moon.
They had to wait a while for that journey to begin.
The launch was delayed more than two and a half hours by a minor technical problem.
But when it finally went, that was a beauty.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, ignition sequence started. All engines are started.
We have ignition two, one, zero. We have a liftoff.
We have a liftoff, and it's lighting up the area. It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center.
The Saturn V is moving off the pad.
It has now cleared the tower.
The tower is now complete. We're in a roll, Bob.
Mission control, Gene Cernan reporting the launch vehicle.
We're over into the proper attitude. Everything is looking good at this point.
The scene is gone.
Roger, 17, you're go.
Altitude one point one miles.
We'll cut to another camera now and show you what happened on the first stage of that rocket, burned up and separated from the staff.
Coming up on first stage, shutdown.
And we've had shutdown on time on the first stage.
Roger, they're looking here. Looking good.
Sure felt like it.
Apollo 17 is on its way.
Wally Schirra is the only astronaut to have flown on all three of America's manned space programs up to now.
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
Wally, we saw the first stage of that rocket fall away.
What happens then to get those men up to the moon?
Well, Walter, I'll use this stack here, which helps very well to explain it.
As you say, the first stage fell away, and that's the larger piece. It's below what I'm holding.
This remainder of the stack approaches Earth orbit, and then this large stage that I'm just putting back down falls away,
and the S-IVB stage forces what's left in my hand now into Earth orbit.
The S-IVB is lighted a second time to force the whole rig, as we would call it, into a lunar, translunar injection.
And once that is accomplished, the S-IVB no longer is required. It ultimately will crash into the moon.
And then this part falls off the shroud cover. I'll have to put it down to give you a little room to see.
The command module, the service module, separates, turns around, and gets the limb,
and attaches to it, and pulls the limb actually right out of the S-IVB.
And the S-IVB now is on its way coasting to the moon.
As they get into lunar orbit, the limb, which is this spider-looking device on the side here,
separates from the command module, and it then burns out of lunar orbit and comes down and lands on the moon.
Now Ron Evans will be circling the moon, waiting for his two colleagues to come back up again some four days later.
And then, of course, that's the rendezvous that we all wait for, where they come back without the descent stage.
The astronauts had chosen the names for those spacecraft.
The command module was named America, the lunar module Challenger.
In a minute, we'll see what happened when Challenger landed on the moon.
["Cheerios Theme Song"]
Frankenberry is the super sweet cereal.
Count Chocula is the super sweet cereal.
I've got strawberry-flavored sweeties.
I've got chocolate sweeties.
Frankenberry.
Count Chocula.
Look, it's Count Chocula's and Frankenberry's monster action rings.
Turn it back and forth and make the monster move.
Six different monster action rings.
One free in specially marked boxes of Count Chocula and Frankenberry.
As Challenger was landing on the moon, there were no television cameras there to record the event.
The camera aboard the spacecraft wasn't brought out until later.
So we'll have to show you by simulation what it looked like as the astronauts landed.
But you'll hear their actual voices during what was later described as the best moon landing yet.
Ninety feet, little forward velocity.
Eighty feet, going down at three.
Getting a little dust.
They're sixty feet, going down about two.
Very little dust.
Forty feet, going down at three.
Standby for touchdown.
Standby.
Twenty-five feet, down at two.
Feels good.
Twenty feet, going down at two.
Ten feet.
Contact.
Stop push.
Engine stop.
Engine arm.
Proceed.
Command override off.
Load controller.
Hand hold.
Kings auto.
Houston, the Challenger has landed.
Another one.
Roger, Challenger, that's super.
Okay, Parker, Vow.
Boy, you bet it is, Gordo.
Gordo is Gordon Fullerton.
Gordo, you said shut down.
I shut down and we dropped, didn't we?
Yes, sir.
But we is here.
And is we here.
How does that look?
Pressures.
Pressures look great.
This is the Apollo Control Room in Houston, Texas.
Its official name is Mission Operations Control Room,
MOCR for short, so the space people called it MOCR, of course.
The Apollo 17 astronauts had taken a flag from this room,
and it was among the first things we saw when the television camera began
sending pictures from the moon.
Since there's no atmosphere on the moon, there's no wind to make the flag fly, of course.
So, as with previous flags, this was supported with a stiff wire at the top.
And, yep, as the astronauts maneuvered that flag into position,
the motion made it almost appear to be fluttering in the breeze.
It was not, but Gene Cernan thought it was beautiful anyway.
We got a beautiful picture of you guys up down there.
Let me tell you, Bob, this flag is a beautiful picture.
You see that?
Okay, you're partially covering her over, but I think that's a pretty good shot.
How's that?
Let me get the focus right.
I don't want to put it.
There you go.
Wait a minute.
It's all right.
I got you reaching for the flag.
How's that?
That's very good, Gene.
Let me get it to stereo.
Houston, that's beautiful.
This has got to be one of the most proud moments of my life, I guarantee you.
If you get it close to in one, it will trade cameras.
Houston, I don't know how many of you are aware of this,
but this flag has flown in the Mokka since Apollo 11,
and we very proudly deploy it on the moon to stay for as long as it can
in honor of all those people who have worked so hard to put us here
and put every other crew here and to make the country, United States,
and mankind something different than it was.
Roger, 17, and presuming to speak on behalf of some of those who work in the Mokka,
we thank you very much.
The men at Mission Control were not the only ones who were proud.
Tracy Sermon was proud.
What happened down here, then up there for that long period of time?
I'd rather have them up there for this because it's just,
it's just to have a nice feeling to have your father be on the moon.
Her father might say it's a nice feeling to be there,
but there was work to be done on the moon, lots of work, for three days.
We'll see how it went.
Kids love balloons. I love tricks.
Disguised like a balloon seller, here's my chance to get some.
Hi, how about a trade?
Sure, sir.
Ah, tricks. And raspberry red, lemon yellow, orange, orange. Oh, joy.
What? Huh?
It's the rabbit. Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids.
And sometimes for tricky rabbits.
Catch that leprechaun. He's got lucky charms.
They're magically delicious.
Always have to be lucky charms.
The old cereal with sweet surprises.
Orange stars, yellow moons, pink hats, green clovers.
See? Magically delicious.
They're back. I leap into this picture.
Look. Watch this.
Nice doggy.
Lucky charms. With sweet surprises.
See? Magically delicious.
Challenger has landed in a valley called Taurus Littro
because the experts figure that was a good place to learn some new things about the moon.
Wally, why specifically did they figure that was a good place?
Well, Walter, we learned enough with the previous flights that they could land in a mountainous area.
You can see this high mountain on one side, south Massif, and north Massif.
Well, between these high mountains and this plain, the hope was to find some of the oldest rocks and some of the youngest rocks.
We found most of the rocks in the past were about 3.9 billion years old.
They were trying to find some younger ones as well as the classic old ones that we saw in the past.
With all that in mind, the astronauts were scheduled for three moon excursions totaling 22 miles.
Now here, they're collecting samples of rocks and soil to bring back to Earth and describing their observations along the way.
Okay, Bob, that right-colored inclusionary sample looks like a strange...
Gotcha.
It's the old boulder rolling trick.
I'm not getting a soil sample under there.
Don't hit the rover.
The work included turning rocks over and collecting soil from underneath where the hot sunlight could not reach them, never had reached them.
But remember that it's easier to roll a rock on the moon because it weighs only one-sixth as much as it would on Earth.
So the astronauts went ahead, rocking and rolling.
Are you ready? Are you ready for this?
I'm not sure I am, but go ahead.
Go, roll!
Look, I would roll on this slope, why don't you?
At times, the work got very rough indeed.
Here, they had driven a hollow tube in the ground to collect a rock sample, and now they had to pull that tube back out.
But even with the aid of a jack, much like an automobile jack, it was pretty hard going.
Let me know when and I'll do that.
All right, all right.
Feel like a person up at home?
Yeah.
Excuse me.
Go ahead.
Okay, okay, okay.
Stay there, stay there.
Okay, back.
Thank you.
How about my UHP?
It's no easy matter to keep your balance in a space suit on the moon.
The astronauts fell down several times, but neither they nor fortunately their space suits were hurt.
The most dramatic discovery came at a crater named Shorty, where the astronauts found something they had not expected, orange colored soil.
Oh, hey!
Wait a minute, where are the reflections? I've been through one.
There is orange soil!
Well, don't move it until I see it.
It's all over!
Orange!
Don't move it until I see it.
I've stirred it up with my feet.
Hey, it is! I can see it from here.
It's orange!
Wait a minute, put my visor up.
It's still orange.
Sure it is.
That may be very important. The astronauts took more samples.
Scientists believe that orange soil may be the result of volcano-like activity, and so the material may give some clues as to what's inside the moon and whether or not it still has a molten core.
The moon landings already have told us some things that are not on the moon.
There's no sign of life on this barren landscape. In fact, no sign that life ever existed.
There's no real sign of water, although there may be traces of water locked deep inside the rocks.
We still don't know how the moon was formed, but perhaps the rocks are going to help us find out.
There is a fascination to this scenery. Tracy Cernan, viewing these pictures, decided she'd like to see part of the moon.
The part my father did.
Really, why?
Because I like to see that rock, that big rock, and also go to the places that they did and find out, look at those places, because it seemed very interesting.
Would Tracy Cernan really like to go to the moon? I mean, if you had your choice, Disneyland or the moon, where would you go?
The moon.
Really? Why?
Because you can go to Disney World more than once, and you might just be able to go to the moon once.
Is it difficult for you to believe that men, and especially your father, is really walking around, had walked around way up there?
No, sir. Not really.
Because it just seems like he's gone on a trip, which he has gone on a trip, but it doesn't seem like he's very far away.
While astronauts Cernan and Schmidt were poking away at the surface of the moon, the third member of the team was busy with his own scientific experiments.
Some may turn out to be more important than the rock collections.
Ron Evans remained in the command and service module, orbiting the moon every two hours, but crammed into that spacecraft were all sorts of cameras and scientific instruments,
exploring the chemistry of the moon from a distance of 17 to 80 miles.
Ron Evans was not entirely alone up there. Five tiny mice were aboard.
They're not the same mice, but they'll give you an idea of what they look like, these right here.
The mice were sealed up in sort of a can, and were taken along as part of an experiment to test the effect of radiation in space.
Ron Evans reported later that the mice were quiet passengers. He hadn't heard a squeak out of them.
The astronauts also had an automobile repair job to do.
They traveled around on a lunar rover, which is powered by electricity and can move up to 10 miles an hour.
But right at the beginning, while they were getting it ready, Cernan accidentally knocked off the right rear fender.
Well, that gave them all sorts of problems the first day, that wheel kicking sticky black moon dust over everything.
So mission control figured out a solution.
The astronauts were advised to improvise a fender using maps like these and fastening them into place with clamps from a light inside to kind of form a fender like that.
Well, it worked pretty well. So well, in fact, that the astronauts were later named honorary members of the Auto Body Association of America.
And here's how that fender repair looked.
I think that'll stay.
I think it'll stay.
Why don't I turn this?
Okay. You won't get that any tighter.
No, I mean why don't I turn that down, because we'll keep that much less to run into.
There you go.
Not too close to the wheel.
Okay.
I think that's good.
Too bad we don't have one more clamp. Well, one more clamp probably in our through with the steering.
I think that'll stop the rooster tail, because that's...
I think that'll stop a lot of it, Houston. That's swinging forward. Okay, let's go.
Okay. It's configured.
Sounds like a good attempt, men. We'll hope it works.
Cernan and Schmidt were the 11th and 12th men to walk on the moon, and yet until now we've very rarely seen the face of a man on the moon.
Molly, tell us why that is.
Well, the radiation, the ultraviolet light that comes with no atmosphere could penetrate the face mask and cause severe burns on the face.
So we have this gold-covered plate on the faceplate. This keeps out these harmful rays.
At this time, we got to see the faces of both astronauts once Cernan cleaned the lens of the television camera.
Can I change your oil?
Oh, thank you, Zena. That looks much better.
How about any other service I can be?
Okay.
Jack Schmidt had his visor up several times. He claimed it was scratched and he couldn't see well through it.
I'm not sure I can get back on here.
Somehow it makes a difference seeing a face there.
Earlier moonwalkers, it seemed almost science-fictional at times, but with a face glimpsed even briefly, they become human beings, Earth men.
And above them, in that blackest of skies, the Earth from which they came and to which they would soon return.
The Earth's prettier than the moon, as one young Earthman observed John Evans.
All you see on the moon is craters and hills and stuff.
You get bored with it after a while, you've been up there for a while.
Well, not if there was a town up there. But, you know, I wouldn't like to just stay up there and, you know, just get out each day and walk and then go back to sleep.
And then, like if there was a city up there, I wouldn't mind staying up there.
But maybe someday there will be a city up there. I never know.
Coming up next, the final ceremonies on the moon and a long trip back home.
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What happened?
We won first prize for the best dance act.
Hello, I, Baron Van Redberry, with my new berry-flavored oat cereal, will make a fantastic landing in the snow.
I'll snow him.
Wunderbar!
That was not so wunderbar. But watch this.
Kids, now get these colorful iron-odd patches. Wear them on your clothes.
Six different patches showing Baron Van Redberry and Sir Grapefellow. One free in specially marked boxes of Baron Van Redberry.
Challenger has landed. The adventures of Apollo 17 will continue after this pause for station identification.
Enjoy music for the Christmas season with the CBS Orchestra on tidings of great joy. Tomorrow morning on CBS.
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UFO at seven.
You are watching Challenger Has Landed, the adventures of Apollo 17.
Here again is Walter Cronkite.
Apollo 17 was special. It was, after all, the last trip to the moon for now and possibly the last for a long time.
And so the astronauts prepared some special farewell ceremonies.
Part of that ceremony was dedicated to a group of youngsters, 78 foreign students between the ages of 15 and 17,
who had been watching the mission from Cape Kennedy and Houston.
And the astronauts also had taken along a plaque to mark the place at which man completed his first explorations of the moon.
Here's how those ceremonies went at the end of the third and last moonwalk.
Houston, before we close out our EBA, we understand that there are young people in Houston today
who have been effectively touring our country, young people from countries all over the world, effectively touring our country,
had the opportunity to watch the launch of Apollo 17,
hopefully had an opportunity to meet some of our young people in our country,
and we'd like to say first of all welcome and we hope you enjoyed your stay.
Second of all, I think probably one of the most significant things we can think about when we think about Apollo
is that it has opened for us, for us being the world, a challenge of the future.
The door is now cracked, but the promise of that future lies in the young people, not just in America,
but the young people all over the world learning to live and learning to work together.
In order to remind all the people of the world, in so many countries throughout the world,
that this is what we all are striving for in the future, Jack has picked up a very significant rock,
typical of what we have here in the Valley of Torres Littoral.
It's a rock composed of many fragments of many sizes and many shapes,
probably from all parts of the moon, perhaps billions of years old,
but a rock of all sizes and shapes, fragments of all sizes and shapes,
and even colors that have grown together and become a cohesive rock,
outlasting the nature of space, sort of living together in a very coherent, very peaceful manner.
When we return this rock, or some of the others like it to Houston,
we'd like to share a piece of this rock with so many of the countries throughout the world.
I hope that this will be a symbol of what our feelings are, what the feelings of the Apollo program are,
and a symbol of mankind that we can live in peace and harmony in the future.
A portion of a rock will be sent to a representative agency or museum in each of the countries
represented by the young people in Houston today.
And we hope that that rock and the students themselves will carry with them our good wishes,
not only for the New Year coming up, but also for themselves, their countries, and all mankind in the future.
Put that in the big bag, you know.
We salute you, Thomas of the future.
We thank you for your sentiments and your interest.
And now, let me bring this camera around to commemorate not just Apollo 17's visit to the Valley of Taurus Littrow,
but as an everlasting commemoration of what the real meaning of Apollo is to the world.
The words are, Here man completed his first exploration of the moon, December 1972 A.D.
May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.
It's signed, Eugene A. Thurman, Ronald E. Evans, Harrison H. Smith, and most prominently, Richard M. Nixon,
President of the United States of America.
The Apollo 17 astronauts set new records for total time on the moon and the weight of rock samples taken aboard.
Before they lifted off, they set another record that may go unchallenged for a long, long time,
the first Christmas poem from the moon. Jack Schmidt wrote it and read it.
It's a week before Christmas and all through the limb, not a pomegranate was stirring, not even Cernan.
The samples were stowed in their places with care in hopes that with you they soon will be there.
And Cernan, seen in his hammock, and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long, short lunar nap.
Up on a commoop there rose such a scatter I sprained from my hammock to see what was the matter.
Down on the breast of the surface below is a luster of objects as if in snow.
And what to my wondering eye should appear but a miniature rover, an eight-tiny reindeer,
a little old driver so lively and quick I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
I heard him explain as the over the hills he did speed,
Merry Christmas to all and to you all, Godspeed.
A few hours after that poetry reading, it was time for Challenger to leave the moon, or at least part of Challenger.
Wally, show us what happens.
Over the lower stage this gold-colored section stays behind.
That's the descent stage and rather hurriedly you see that ascent stage leave the moon
and take the crewmen up into lunar orbit for rendezvous.
The astronauts had left their television camera behind on the rover and it was remote controlled by radio signals from Houston.
The result was an amazingly good shot of that lunar liftoff.
Okay, let's get off and get the camera.
Ten seconds.
Raise voice.
Okay, I'm going to get the pro.
Ninety-nine, proceed in three, two, one, ignition.
Fly away, Houston.
That's your good.
Exit.
Get rover.
Now, here you have good flight.
Okay, thirty seconds.
Three oh eight, your number.
Take off at fifteen hundred feet.
And eight dot looks good.
Now, here's the part that remains on the moon, the abandoned descent stage.
Decades or centuries from now, some other explorer may find it still there.
Let's look at that liftoff again in slow motion.
The camera work here is amazing.
As we said, the camera is controlled from Houston.
And because of the distance, there's a three-second lag between a command coming out from Houston
and receiving the picture back from the moon.
So the man controlling the camera has to anticipate everything by three seconds.
Well, that's done by a man in mission control named Edward Fendell.
And he's so good, they call him Captain Video.
So Challenger had left the moon, but the challenge wasn't over yet.
The three Apollo astronauts had to link up their two spacecrafts and then fire themselves back toward Earth.
We'll look at how they did that in a minute.
Catch that leprechaun. He's got lucky charms.
They're magically delicious.
Always have to be lucky charms.
The old cereal with sweet surprises.
Orange stars, yellow moons, pig heads, green clovers.
See? Magically delicious.
They're back. I leap into this picture.
Look! Watch this.
Nice doggy.
Lucky charms.
With sweet surprises.
See? Magically delicious.
Gonna start the day the right way, the old way, the get up and go way. Gonna have a bowl of them oats. Gonna get a pow, pow, powerful good, good meal from Cheer, Cheer, Cheerios.
Start your day with Cheerios, protein-rich cereal made from oats. Oats have more protein than wheat, rice, or corn.
So get up and go with Cheerios.
It takes precision flying to fire one spaceship off the moon and have it connect with another flying in orbit around the moon.
Here's how it looked from where Ron Evans sat. The camera was aboard his command module.
That's the surface of the moon down there.
And if you look very carefully, you see a tiny dot moving across it. That dot is the lunar module, Challenger, coming back up from the moon.
And we're just going to let this picture run for a while. It changes very slowly, very gradually, but you'll see it getting larger and larger.
This is exactly the way it happened.
Isn't that a beautiful picture, Ron?
It's amazing to me, Warren, because you see the limb in that one corner of the screen and it doesn't change position, which means the rendezvous is right on track, as we call it. A perfect rendezvous.
It moves closer and closer and all the time. The radar is giving the signals back and forth.
The men are adjusting by firing their reaction control rockets and finally bringing these two spacecraft together, moving around the moon at a tremendous speed.
But how precise each of them are. It's really exciting to see that maneuver.
OK, Ron, we're at 1,200 feet and 8.8 feet per second.
OK, that's about right. Good turn.
Yeah, you do have a stub of an antenna out there on the same side that the VHF antenna's on.
Yeah, how far is it sticking out?
I can't tell you yet, but from where I am, about a third of the way, a third of the length of the VHF antenna.
Oh, that's not very far.
No.
OK, we're at 970 feet.
800 feet, we're at 8.8 feet per second.
It looks like Challenger's in good shape. I don't see anything hanging down or anything.
He's in excellent shape.
OK, we're at 650 feet and 8.8.
OK.
God, you look pretty.
Yeah, you just got a small stub, Ron, probably not more than a couple feet.
600 feet, breaking to five.
OK, I've got 5.0 and I'm at 520 feet.
Ron, I'm closing at 5 feet per second, 440 feet.
OK. Good to see you. Good to have you all back up here.
It's been a good trip.
Now, this picture was taken just a little later as the two spaceships prepared for docking.
Challenger maneuvering into position.
The hole you see in Challenger there is a sort of a tunnel called the drogue.
The command module has a probe that fits into that tunnel and it pulls the two spacecraft together
once it's locked on and it clamps them to really lock them in place.
The docking was completed well. In fact, the whole mission went well.
But it wasn't as easy as it may have looked.
The astronauts trained for 16 months to get ready for this flight.
Homework in that, Tracy Cernan knew how hard that had been.
If NASA called you today and said, Tracy, we would like you to plan a trip to the Moon,
was there anything about the trip that you would change?
Yes, sir.
What is it?
I would not like to do all that hard training and I would not like to be all cooped up in places
where they're cooped up. I like to go in a nice comfortable airplane.
It used to be real comfortable.
If you were planning a mission to the Moon, what would you plan? What would you change about it?
About what they're doing now?
About what they're doing or what you would want to do there?
I would change it so that more people could go up on it and look around. I don't know what else.
I think it's just fine the way it is. Except for it would be neat if there were lots of people.
Sort of take a bus up there?
Yeah, that would be good.
I'd make more Apollo flights and go back to each landing site and see what has happened at those landing sites
where they have already landed.
The astronauts were on their way home. After almost two days in orbit around the Moon,
they fired the rocket pointing them back toward Earth.
As they left the Moon, they sent this television picture of a crater on the back side of the Moon,
a part of the Moon never visible from Earth.
Ron Evans had been sort of the forgotten man while the others were moonwalking.
But now Ron Evans was about to have his starring role. Not a moonwalk, but a spacewalk.
We'll look at that in one minute.
Tally-ho! Sir Grapefellow here with my new grape-flavored oat cereal, about to make a perfect three-point landing.
One, two, one, and three.
If you think that was grape fun, watch this.
Kids, now you can get this smooth-gliding air car, blow up the balloon, place it on the car, and watch it go.
It's smashing good fun.
One free in specially-marked boxes of Sir Grapefellow.
Kids love balloons. I love tricks.
Disguised like a balloon seller, here's my chance to get some.
Hi, how about a trade?
Sure, sir.
Ah, tricks! And raspberry red, lemon yellow, orange, orange. Oh, joy!
What? Huh?
It's the rabbit! Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids.
And sometimes for tricky rabbits.
We mentioned before that Ron Evans had been conducting all sorts of scientific experiments while in orbit around the moon.
But to make those experiments count, he had to go for a walk in space. Wally, tell us about that.
Well, Ron had to open this hatch, which lowers the pressure in the command module, so all three men must be in suits.
So they're all exposed to the hazard of space.
Then Ron goes out on what we call an umbilical, a tether line with his oxygen in a line so he can't float away, because he has a long trip to make.
A short trip, of course, to go back here into this equipment bay and retrieve the magazine canisters that held the film,
that were taking these great pictures of the moon that we'll probably see one of these days quite soon.
Both the Evans and the Cernan families have gathered in the Evans home in Houston to watch that spacewalk,
and everyone, you can bet, enjoyed it tremendously, including Ron Evans himself.
Open the door!
Speaking of, Kate, did you see a lead out?
Roger.
Am I on the suit?
That's affirmative.
Okay.
Upstanding quality picture, Ron.
Can you wave?
Okay.
That's it, Ron, very good.
God, I didn't come on to you.
Hey, this is great.
How about being a space man?
This is it.
It's an handstand.
He's bringing back one of the film containers now.
Notice here he's upside down, but he's holding on securely with his hands.
Now, he's just floating. He's not going to float away anywhere, but he's holding on pretty tightly to be sure he doesn't.
Ah, now I'm going to have to pass up again.
Next day, the astronauts televised a news conference from space.
That's Evans on the left, Cernan in the middle, and Schmidt with the whiskers there at the right.
Gene Cernan took the occasion to send Christmas greetings, especially for American prisoners of war in Vietnam.
And with that, from Platon 17, spacecraft America, on December 18, 1972, we all wish you a very, very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.
Godspeed and God bless you all.
Thank you, guys. That was a good show. We enjoyed every minute.
Apollo 17 was almost home. In a minute, we'll take a look at the end of that journey.
Frankenberry is the super sweet cereal.
Count Chocula is the super sweet cereal.
I've got strawberry flavored sweeties.
I've got chocolate sweeties.
Frankenberry.
Count Chocula.
Look, it's Count Chocula's and Frankenberry's monster action rings.
Turn it back and forth and make the monster move. Six different monster action rings. One free in specially marked boxes of Count Chocula and Frankenberry.
Oh, only two more miles to the gas station, Gramps.
There must be a better way to...
I know. Sonny can't resist the chocolatey flavor of Coco Puffs. It makes breakfast taste like chocolate.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
Coco for Coco Puffs! Coco for Coco Puffs!
How do we get here?
Coco Puffs, Sonny, from Coco Puffs.
Apollo 17 was due to splash down in the South Pacific Ocean some 400 miles southeast of the island of Samoa.
Aircraft carrier Ticonderoga was waiting to recover the astronauts.
Before the spacecraft reenters the atmosphere, it separates from the service module like this.
The command module heads home. The service module has no heat protection, burns up from the friction when it enters the Earth's atmosphere.
Well, here's how it looked last Tuesday as the carrier waited for its first glimpse of the parachutes that would lower the Apollo capsule to the warm ocean waters.
In Houston, the families were waiting for the same thing.
And there it is, a beautiful picture. The astronauts reporting by radio. Everything's fine.
Ah! There's a suit that's a perfect picture of them. Oh, look at that. All of them are beautiful. Fantastic.
A camera aboard a helicopter took these shots of the splashdown three miles from the carrier.
Look at, oh, look. Ah! Look at that. Beautiful. Oh, boy. I've never seen a picture taken like that. Look.
Hey, you guys, it looked like a camera was on top of someone that's shooting the thing getting down there. Never seen one taken like that before.
After frogmen secured flotation gear around the capsule, the astronauts came out and were lifted by slings to a helicopter, first Schmidt, and then Evans, and then Cernan.
Then aboard the Ticonderoga for a hero's welcome. You'll notice that Jack Schmitz shaved off that beard.
We think we flew a good mission. We think we accomplished something. And by golly, we're proud of it.
You know, a few years back I was on a, stuck of a carrier like this after Apollo 10 when I came back from the moon.
And I was extremely excited and enthused. Certainly no more than I am now.
But I said at that time when I came back and I just, I've re-proved it to myself that nothing is impossible in this world when dedicated people are involved.
You know, there's a fundamental law of nature that either you must grow or you must die.
Whether that be an idea, whether that be a man, whether that be a flower or a country.
I thank God that our country has chosen to grow.
I'm really proud to be here. I'm proud to be part of Apollo 17. I'm proud to be a proud of NASA.
I'm very proud to be a captain in the Navy. And most of all, I'm proud to be an American.
And I'd like to present another guy who's pretty proud to be an American.
I'd like to now let him present the third member of our crew, the first, Commander Ron Evans.
Thank you, James.
General Green.
Captain Green.
Admiral.
You know, about six and a half years ago I was fortunate enough to be on the Ticonderoga when I was notified of my selection to the Astronaut Corps.
I think it's quite fitting that I should have been able to have the opportunity to be picked up by the Ticonderoga after our journey to the Moon.
To me, that's really something.
The fact that it was the Ticonderoga is part of the United States Navy.
The fact that I'm a commander in the United States Navy and I flew the United States Space Tribe America to the moon and back, I'm really honored and I'm proud.
That's the best way I can express it.
And I think right now I'd like to present our, not our third crew member, but the third member of the Apollo 17 crew, Jack Smith.
Thank you.
I'm happy to be here and I guess I never will be Navy.
I'm sorry, but if there was ever a team I'd like to be part of it's this one.
Thank you very much.
And with that ceremony, the end of Apollo, the last men were back from the moon.
Are you sad that this is perhaps the last time that men will go to the moon for a very, very long time, perhaps forever?
Well, yes, I am sort of sad because the space program doesn't need to end.
I think it's done a very successful job and I wish it would go on, but sometimes your wishes just don't come true.
There's a lot of disagreement as to whether the Apollo program was worth the cost, some $25 billion.
It may be years before we know the answers to that, before we know what secrets the moon has revealed and what importance they have to our life on Earth.
But in the meantime, there is a space program continuing.
Wally Schirra tells us what's coming up next.
Well, Walter, some people might say Apollo's dead, but I'd rather say long live Apollo.
And here we have a mock-up of the Skylab that should launch sometime early this spring.
And here we have the command service module that we know from the old Apollo days that will rendezvous with this stage, the Saturn IVB, the third stage of the lunar mission.
It's emptied out and it's now a laboratory. The crews will rendezvous with it.
The first mission, the crew will be there for almost a month.
If things go well, another crew will be there for up to two months.
And then a third crew will go up there for two months. So we'll see 73 is a busy year.
These panels you see, both these large rectangular ones and these paddle wheel effects, are solar panels to take electrical energy from the sunlight itself to power here a telescope mount and here to power the laboratory.
And again, Apollo gets in space in 1975 with the joint mission with the Russians.
And the Russians will be in orbit with the Soyuz.
And one day later, the command module, service module we see again will be in space to rendezvous with a docking adapter and have a joint mission with the Russians.
Ultimately, we change to a new way of spaceflight. And this is called the Space Shuttle.
This large device will lift off again from Cape Kennedy.
But just before it gets into Earth orbit, this aircraft-like vehicle will separate and fly and power itself into Earth orbit.
As you can see, it looks very much like an airplane.
It can come back and land on the surface of the Earth and be used over and over again, carrying a payload in this long section up here, even a whole satellite.
The Apollo 17 astronauts had one more journey to complete this week.
It ended here at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston as the astronauts return home to their families, home for Christmas.
They have some busy days ahead reporting on their mission, helping out the scientists and engineers.
But right now, it's something else on their mind. They are home.
They're home with a clearer view, perhaps, of what their home is like.
They know their home is more than a house with a yard around it.
Home is a ball revolving in space, dwarfed by the emptiness around it.
There's beauty to that home of ours, even from a distance, clouds and colors and oceans.
For the Earth has what the Moon does not, air and rain and life.
It is Tracy Cernan's home. She shares it with three and a half billion other human beings.
It's John and Jamie Evans' home, and it's our home, too.
It always seemed like a large home, but now that man has seen it floating alone in the immense expanse of space,
it doesn't seem as large as it used to.
And one lesson we've learned, we'd better treat it well.
It's the only home we have.
This is Walter Cronkite.
This has been a CBS News special.
Challenger has landed.
The Adventures of Apollo 17.
This broadcast was sponsored by General Mills, makers of the famous Big G cereals.
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