Apollo 17: The Last Men on the Moon (Space Documentary) | Real Stories

Video from the channel Real Stories about Apollo 17, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 56:04. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary on Apollo 17, the last crewed mission to the Moon. It combines mission footage and audio with testimony from technicians and engineers who worked on the program and from science communicators, as well as statements from Harrison Schmitt himself. It follows the mission from launch to splashdown in the Pacific and makes the case for its scientific value against the public's waning interest at the time.

The Apollo program was born from John F. Kennedy's commitment in May 1961, shortly after Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight. After the success of Apollo 11 in July 1969, political and public interest declined and the planned Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions were cancelled, leaving Apollo 17 as the last one. The crew consisted of commander Eugene Cernan, a veteran of Gemini and Apollo 10; command module pilot Ronald Evans, on his only flight; and geologist Harrison Schmitt, who replaced Joe Engle under pressure from the scientific community.

The launch, in the early hours of 7 December 1972, was the only night launch of a Saturn V. During the journey, the crew took the photograph of Earth known as the "Blue Marble." The lunar module Challenger landed on 11 December in the Taurus-Littrow valley, chosen for its geological diversity. Cernan and Schmitt spent three days on the surface and logged about 22 hours of exploration, covered 34 km with the lunar rover, deployed the ALSEP instrument package and collected more than 110 kg of samples and over 2,400 photographs. A broken fender on the lunar rover was repaired with adhesive tape and a map following a procedure devised in Houston. Near Shorty crater, Schmitt found orange soil formed by tiny volcanic glass beads around 3.6 billion years old. Meanwhile, Evans mapped the Moon from the command module America and, on the way back, went outside to retrieve film from the cameras. Ed Fendell, from mission control, managed to film the lunar module's liftoff clearly for the first time.