Propelled by rocket fuel, ego and tunnel vision, Eugene Cernan was the last man to walk on the moon. Now a new film tells his amazing story, from the crash that charred his helmet to the ‘spacewalk from hell’

Eugene Cernan has felt the white heat of re-entry three times. “The landing,” says the astronaut, understandably animated by the memory, “is like being immersed in a sheet of fire, a comet, a shooting star.” Cernan, alongside crewmates Thomas Stafford and John Young, has also travelled faster than any human being in history: Apollo 10 at one point reached 24,791mph, earning it a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

Cernan is talking about The Last Man on the Moon, a new documentary that gives the naturally reticent astronaut, now 82, a chance to tell his story. The bare bones are thus: born in Chicago in 1934 to a Czech mother and Slovak father, he became a naval aviator before being selected by Nasa for astronaut training. He went on to pilot Gemini 9A in June 1966 and Apollo 10 in May 1969, before being selected as commander of Apollo 17, which carried out the most recent moon landing in December 1972. It was on this voyage that Cernan, the final astronaut to reboard the lunar module, became the 12th – and last – man to walk on the moon.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘If you think going to the moon is hard, try staying at home’ … Cernan with his family

He is, as Mark Craig’s film shows, a survivor of that great adventure: neither becoming capsized by it, as Buzz Aldrin was for a while, using alcohol; nor retreating from it, as the reclusive Neil Armstrong did. Like many astronauts, he retains a quiet authority, a military matter-of-factness that manifests itself in certain recurring phrases, not least: “We were there to do a job.”



Occasionally, though, this reticence gives way to a sense of wonder. Some of the best moments in the documentary come when the still-dramatic images of Cernan’s missions are merged with his evocative reflections. “You can hear yourself breathe inside the suit,” he says of the long moments of stillness and expectation just before the launch of Apollo 10. “Everything intensifies – but the clock keeps going.”

The ground rumbled and the fish jumped out of the lake

Cernan’s first words in The Last Man on the Moon are: “I am the luckiest human being in the world.” But as the film shows, he had his share of bad luck. His first spacewalk from Gemini 9, dogged by technical difficulties, was surely an inspiration for Gravity. Not given to overstatement, he later described it as “the spacewalk from hell”. And although he had successfully carried out more than 200 landings as a navy pilot, he crashed a helicopter in 1971, just two weeks before Apollo 14 was launched, a mission for which he had been chosen as back-up flight commander.

He still has the helmet, most of which is charcoal black. “How can anyone do something so dumb?” he says, still angry with himself. Cernan thought he had “screwed up” his chance of ever being considered for another lunar mission, but a few weeks later he got a call saying: “The job’s still yours if you want it.” The following year, Cernan led the final mission.

“The ground rumbled and all the fish jumped out of the lake,” remembers his then wife, Barbara, of the night launch of Apollo 17. She was one of 500,000 people who watched it from Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, while people as far away as Miami – 225 miles south – saw a red streak in the sky. “It was my personal moment of reckoning,” says Cernan. “This is what I had asked for.”

He and Harrison Schmitt spent three days on the moon’s surface. “People say, ‘What was it really like up there?’ Or they’ll ask, ‘Did you find God?’ What I remember was that I felt like I had shaped up.” Was he able to have a break and at least try to take in the wonder of it all? “Well, you couldn’t not. We saw some dazzling, extraordinary things, and you had to take time to appreciate them. I mean, not too many people get to see an Earth-rise.” He pauses for a long time. “When I was boarding the lunar module for the last time and I looked at my footprints, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. That was the one moment when I wanted to stop time.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One last fitting … Cernan in training

Unlike the first man to walk on the moon, the late Neil Armstrong, with whom he became friends, Cernan seems to have relished the celebrity the moon landing bestowed on him. He still makes public appearances. “I enjoy meeting people,” he tells me, his voice still strong. “I feel like I’m thanking them for that faith they had in me.”

Last Man on the Moon recalls US era of courage to do the impossible Read more

The documentary shows the human cost of that celebrity, however, particularly for his first wife, Barbara, who says: “If you think going to the moon is hard, try staying at home.” Their marriage did not survive. The Apollo astronauts were an elite group of alpha males, to which family often took second place. Bound by the discipline and dedication of their calling, but also by their shared sense of destiny, they developed egos to match. “We were so tunnel-vision about going to the moon,” says Cernan regretfully in the film, “that we never had time to get off that big white horse we were riding until it was too late. But sooner or later, you’ve got to come to grips with who you are and what’s important in life.”

Cernan now seems to have done that. Does he keep in touch with his fellow astronauts? “Well, you don’t become best friends for the rest of your life in the way you might expect,” he says. “That was certainly not the case with my flights anyway.” But there is one thing he is clear about: “All I ever wanted to do was fly. For a long time, there was nothing else.”

• The Last Man on the Moon is out now in the US and opens 8 April in the UK.



