demonstration to an audience of
millions back home. It came from a
suggestion by Joe Allen, who was
inspired by the experimental work
of the great Italian scientist, Galileo
Galilei.
More than three centuries earlier,
Galileo had stood atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped two
weights of different sizes, proving
that gravity acted equally on them,
regardless of mass.
Now, in front of his own Leaning
Tower—the slightly-tilted Falcon—
Scott performed his own version of
the experiment.
“In my left hand, I have a feather,”
he told his audience, “in my right
hand, a hammer. I guess one of
the reasons we got here today was
because of a gentleman named
Galileo a long time ago, who made
a rather significant discovery about
falling objects in gravity fields. The
feather happens to be, appropriately, a falcon’s feather, for our Falcon,
and I’ll drop the two of them here
and hopefully they’ll hit the ground
at the same time.”
They did…and applause echoed
throughout Mission Control.
“How about that?” Scott concluded triumphantly. “Mr Galileo was
correct in his findings!” He originally
planned to try it first, to check that
it would work, but was worried that
it might get stuck to his glove. He
decided to “wing it” and, thankfully,
it worked.
In his autobiography, Irwin would
relate that Scott had actually carried
two feathers on Apollo 15, one from
the falcon mascot at the Air Force
Academy. Unfortunately—and much
to Scott’s irritation—Irwin accidentally
stepped on it! They searched for the
feather, but could only find his big
bootprints. “I’m wondering,” wrote
Irwin, “if hundreds of years from now
somebody will find a falcon’s feather
under a layer of dust on the surface
of the Moon and speculate on what
strange creature blew it there.”
Shortly after 9:00 p.m. EDT on 2
August, a little more than four hours
since setting foot on the surface for
EVA-3, Scott drove the rover, alone,
to a spot a few hundred feet east of
the lander.
From this place, Mission Control
34
34
The Apollo 15 spacecraft was modified to carry out
a greater range of lunar orbital science activities than
any previous mission. Credit: NASA
would be able to remotely operate
its television camera to record the
liftoff of Falcon’s ascent stage. Scott
pulled out a small red Bible and
placed it atop the control panel of
the rover, in order to show those who
followed in their footsteps why they
had come.
Next, he climbed off the machine
and strode toward a small crater. He
dug a small hollow and dropped a
small aluminum figurine of a fallen
astronaut onto the lunar soil. The
tiny figurine had been arranged by
Apollo 15 command module pilot Al
Worden. Meanwhile, Jim Irwin had
organized a small plaque, planted
alongside, listing the names of 14
astronauts and cosmonauts known
to have died doing their duty. The
list included Yuri Gagarin, the first
man in space, together with Vladimir
Komarov and the crews of Apollo 1
and Soyuz 11.
As he gazed on the plaque, Scott
knew he would never come here
again. “I had come to feel a great
affection for this distant and strangely beautiful celestial body,” he later
wrote in his memoir, Two Sides of the
Moon. “It had provided me with a
peaceful, if temporary, home. But it
was time to return to my own home
back on Earth.”
Within the confines of Falcon,
they had little time to gaze out at
the spectacular site of Hadley; only
a few hours remained before their
1:11 p.m. EDT liftoff, bound for a
rendezvous with Al Worden in the
command module Endeavour.
It marked the first occasion on
which a crew would complete a
moonwalk and perform the liftoff
and rendezvous without a rest
period in between the two. Having
been outside for less than five hours
The Apollo 15 Command Module safely touches down in the mid-Pacific Ocean even though one of the three
main parachutes failed to function properly. Credit: NASA
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