Apollo 11 CAPCOM and Apollo 16 Moonwalker Charlie Duke toured SpaceX with the crew in this
new video. At minute 1:30, he stopped to look at the Apollo astronaut tribute I made for SpaceX, with signed congratulations from each Apollo mission, including his.
Polaris Dawn launched this morning, taking four private citizens the farthest from Earth, ever. Two of them are lucky SpaceX employees. All four will test the new SpaceX spacesuits during the first private spacewalk (EVA) by Jared and Sarah. And it will be the first with Starlink-quality video streaming.
Back to the Charlie Duke video: when asked what his dreams are for the future of human space exploration:
“Well I’m excited about the privatization of space. When it first came about, I was a little dubious, but then it was quickly obvious that SpaceX knew what they were doing, and I have been a big supporter of what SpaceX is doing in space in manned and unmanned launches. I’m impressed with this facility, and it’s the first time I’ve been here.”
Duke himself did a standup-EVA 52 years ago on Apollo 16, during its trip back to Earth. At minute 3:00 of this interview:
Q: What was the most memorable thing you went through during Apollo?
A: “Well , let me cover something that was very similar to y’all’s, and that’s the trans-Earth EVA. They’re very spectacular; I mean the view, that was my most impressive memory, really, to float out with the Earth down here”
“My advice is: Don’t let go! I wish you well.”
· My visit to Sarah Gillis in training
here
· Backstory on how a cruel
60 Minutes program motivated me to make the Apollo tribute to SpaceX, which hangs at the entrance in HQ
here
· At minute 0:11, you see an iconic photo of Duke using his Apollo 16 rock scoop as an arm rest. He visited us to discuss it after I bought that very scoop from him:
video And he describes his use of the scoop for three days on the lunar surface to collect samples:
video 