March 15 - Happy Birthday, Alan Bean

Posted on March 15, 2022

Key Points

This is an update of my post published on March 15, 2011:

An astronaut who dared to “litter” on the Moon?

Born in Texas on this day in 1932, Alan Bean grew up to be an astronaut who flew with the Apollo program and became the fourth person to walk on the Moon.

Bean took a silver astronaut pin that had been given to him by NASA and threw it as far as he could, because he knew that when he returned to Earth he would be given a gold pin as a replacement. (NASA gave astronauts-in-training silver pins; when they finally got to go to space on a mission, they earned gold pins of the same style. And Bean had had his silver pin for six long years before he finally got to “graduate” to being a “real” astronaut.) Bean liked to think of that pin, later, whenever he looked up at the Moon.

Bean also left the silver pin belonging to the astronaut that was supposed to be on the mission – Clifton C. Williams – but who had died in a plane crash. Bean was actually chosen to replace Williams. Taking the astronaut pin of Williams to the Moon was a way of honoring him.

While on the Apollo 12 moon walk, Bean and his fellow astronaut Pete Conrad wanted to use a self-timer to take a photograph of the two of them together. Apparently they were hoping to confuse people back home—wait, who took that picture?—but the two couldn’t find the self-timer in the carrier tote bag, and so they lost the opportunity. At the very end of the lunar walk, when it was too late, Bean found the self-timer and, according to Wikipedia, “threw it as hard as he could.”

As a woman with a purse, I can totally relate to Bean’s frustration.

By the way, since they didn’t get their buddies-on-the-Moon-together photo, Alan Bean – who was an artist as well as an astronaut – painted a picture of them, and he included the astronaut who had had to stay in lunar orbit while he and Conrad had frolicked on the Moon, too – because why not?

Apollo astronauts have left a fair number of items on the moon, deliberately, including mirrors that can bounce back lasers to Earth scientists. Some stuff that was left behind was not for scientific-experiment reasons, but just to lighten the load so that lunar samples can be safely returned to the Earth. That includes things like bags of human poop, hammers and other tools unneeded on the ride home, vomit bags, and lunar overshoes. Astronauts left more than 100 items during the Apollo 11 mission, and at least 796 items from the entire Apollo program.

This photo is not real!

However, there is quite a lot of human-made
stuff on the Moon, including some items that
are basically trash, and we may eventually
need to consider what to do with the stuff!

Wikipedia has a list of the larger human-made items that have crashed onto or landed on the moon—more than 180,000 kg (400,000 pounds) of stuff!

What do you think about the fact that so many items have been left on the surface of the moon? Will these items be studied by scientists to learn the long-time effect of lunar conditions on items made of various materials? Will they be the treasured discoveries of future historians? Will they be enshrined in future lunar museums?