In 1959, NASA chose seven men to train for space exploration. It was an absolute honor to participate in such an elite task force, but Alan Shepard was the only one who actually succeeded in making it all the way to the moon. However while it may seem glamorous, Shepard’s journey was rife with trauma. After years of silence, he’s finally coming clean about the dark experiences he underwent—and the details are truly shocking.
Only The Best Wanted
Anyone who was alive during the late ’60s remembers how intense the Apollo 11 launch was. The world watched in awe as three American astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins — piloted the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle with success. But this foray into space wouldn’t have been possible without Alan Shepard.
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The Special Seven
See, the 1969 Apollo 11 flight wouldn’t have gotten off the ground if not for a dedicated group of seven astronauts chosen by NASA in 1959. Each individual had no idea what to expect, considering NASA was breaking into completely new territory, but they were all thrilled at the chance to participate.
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Shepard Moves To NASA
One of the most talented and respected astronauts in the group was a man named Alan Shepard. During World War II, Shepard worked aboard a Navy vessel, and after the war ended he became a test pilot. His talents eventually brought him to NASA in 1959 as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts.
Wikipedia
Freedom At Last
Shepard and his crew were all put through grueling physical and mental challenges to prove they were fit for space travel. Finally, after working tirelessly for two years, Shepard took control of a spacecraft he named Freedom 7 on the very first Project Mercury flight. He was the first American to venture into the vast unknown.
Wikipedia
Not Without Danger
Freedom 7 managed to enter into space on May 5, 1961, but Shepard was unable to achieve orbit around Earth. However, he did fly 116 miles high before coming back down. The trip was nothing short of exhilarating for both the astronaut and the anxious engineers watching at NASA, but everyone was still well aware of the dangers space travel posed.
NASA
Adding To The Pressure
For one thing, if something went awry, the only help an astronaut had was the vocal instructions from the control center; the bulk of the problem solving was on the astronaut’s shoulders. Additional pressures were added to Alan’s journey, too. Troubles he couldn’t anticipate.
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Thoughts from the Stars
He once jokingly quipped, “It is a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.” He trusted his engineers, but he was still uneasy with the experience — especially given what happened the day before launch.
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Losing Victor
To add even more stress to Shepard’s journey, a Navy balloonist named Victor Prather (below) died one day before Freedom 7 took off when his pressure suit — identical to Shepard’s — filled with water and he drowned. Fortunately, Shepard didn’t suffer the same fate. Though he did face more sobering thoughts.
NHHC
Not Infinite
“I realized up there that our planet is not infinite,” Commander Shepard recalled. “It’s fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it’s tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.”
NASA
Spaceflight Was Possible
After landing in the ocean near the Bahamas, Shepard was pulled to safety, and a group of NASA doctors put the astronaut through an intensely thorough checkup once he returned to Space Center Houston. They checked his vital signs, balance, and mental coordination. As it turned out, Shepard was completely healthy — this had lasting ramifications.
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Tragedy Strikes
Shepard was scheduled to then man the next two flights into space, with the third and final one being an Apollo mission to physically land on the moon. To say Shepard was excited was an understatement; this was an achievement he’d dreamed about for years. However, a physical issue tragically struck, and Shepard soon found himself off the piloting list.
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Sitting By Helplessly
Shepard was hit with Ménière’s disease, an inner-ear disorder that caused sporadic moments of nausea and extreme dizziness. Naturally, NASA couldn’t send someone prone to those side effects into space, so Shepard was forced to accept a desk job, which he loathed. For nearly six years, he frustratingly sat by and watched other astronauts take flight. However, in 1968, much-needed relief came.
NASA
Back To The Grind
Shepard underwent an experimental surgery to fix the inner-ear ailment, and it worked! Finally, after impatiently waiting behind a desk for over half a decade Shepard was ready for space travel again. Because of his status at NASA, he managed to snag an immediate flight assignment and avoid the long wait facing other astronauts. On February 15, 1971, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission.
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The Point of the Mission
That’s because, two years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin so famously took a giant leap for mankind, NASA concluded two lunar landings weren’t enough. Organization executives wanted a third, so they cooked up the Apollo 14 mission. The mission saw Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell suit up for what would be a nine-day jaunt to the moon.
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3…2…1…
NASA scheduled the launch for October 1970, but, after the failure of the Apollo 13 mission, delayed it four months. So, it was January 31, 1971, when these three finally took off from the Kennedy Space Center.
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Unexpected Discoveries
The astronauts hoped, of course, that their scientific agenda up in space would change the way humanity thought about physics. About life. They didn’t know, however, that they’d make a discovery destined to shake the scientific community years later.
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Mission Accomplished
Shepard was joined by crewmates Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell in the Apollo Lunar Module named Antares, and all three men made it to the moon! Roosa stayed in the crew capsule while Shepard and Mitchell took two moonwalks and collected over 100 pounds of rocks to bring back home. At 47 years of age, Shepard became the fifth and oldest person to traverse the moon’s landscape.
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Leaving His Mark
Shepard also wanted to leave his own unique mark on the adventure, so he took his love of sports up into orbit. He harnessed his inner Jack Nicklaus and cranked two golf balls off the moon’s surface! With this, Shepard also carved out a new image of astronauts to the world.
via YouTube
Bringing The “Cool” Factor
Before Shepard’s Apollo 14 journey, the typical idea of an astronaut was someone mild-mannered and conservative. However, the corvette-loving, golf-ball whacking personality that Shepard brought to NASA turned the tables on everyone’s thoughts, and people loved him for it. He brought a previously unseen level of “cool” to the space program.
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Landing
And then, nine days after takeoff, on February 9, the Apollo 14 crew landed safely in the Pacific Ocean. Back on Earth, they delivered their findings to NASA, where scientists eagerly went to work. They didn’t realize how important their findings were.
NASA
Moon Rocks
Unbeknownst to the Apollo 14 crew, however, was that amidst those hundreds of rocks was one that would have scientists completely baffled. A rock that had no business being on the moon. This was not something scientists discovered for a few more decades, however. As he’d done before, Alan faced some tough truths on the mission.
“A New Maturity”
Traveling into space and walking on the moon changed Shepard for the better. When interviewed by British television host David Frost, he explained that the journey gave him “a new maturity” in life. He also later admitted in a different interview that when he looked at Earth from the moon he “wept a little bit. I hadn’t expected to do that.”
Eagle Tribun
Honoring The Man
NASA knew a man like Shepard deserved all the recognition in the world for his career, and so the National Air and Space Museum set up an exhibit to honor him. Not only was Shepard’s Mercury capsule on display, but visitors could also get an up-close and personal look at his intricate space suit.
Destination Moon
Like Father Like Daughter
Even though Shepard passed away in 1998, his legacy was never forgotten, and his oldest daughter, Laura Shepard Churchley (left), still plays a large role in keeping his memory alive. Not only does she give presentations to students around the country, but she’s also the Chair of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation Board of Trustees, a position her father would look down upon with the utmost pride.
The Denver Post
Professor Alexander Nemchin’s Discovery
Meanwhile, the rocks Alan and his crew retrieved some space were passed around from lab to lab, expert to expert. Decades later, after NASA loaned the rock to Curtin University in Australia in 2018, Professor Alexander Nemchin made an eyebrow-raising observation about the rock (below).
Taken For Granite
The 1.8-gram sample contained granite, a mineral common on Earth but incredibly rare on the moon. “The sample also contains quartz (below),” Professor Nemchin added, “which is an even more unusual find on the moon.”
Blake Schwartz / flickr
Zircon!
Additionally, the rock contained zircon, and the chemistry was “very different from that of every other zircon grain ever analyzed in lunar samples,” he continued, “and remarkably similar to that of zircons found on Earth.”
Earth’s Contributions
In other words, somehow, among all the rocks collected by Shepard and Mitchell, was a rock formed on Earth! Professor Nemchin and his team were stumped: how could a stone make the journey without hitching a ride?
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The Start of the Journey
Professor Nemchin and his team put their heads together and composed a theory. The story behind the rock’s journey, as they saw it, started 4 billion years before the Apollo 14 crew stepped aboard their spacecraft.
Slamming
See, back then, when the Earth was in its infancy, space proved a wild place. Asteroids were constantly slamming into the baby-faced planet, forming the landmasses we call home (because Bruce Willis wasn’t around to destroy them).
Without Bruce’s Help
Some of those pre-Willis meteors hit with so much impact that they launched pieces of the earth’s surface a few dozen million miles, all the way up to the surface of the moon.
New Scientist
Long Shots
While this sounds insane, the moon during that time period was about three times closer to Earth than it is now. This explained why the rock collected by the Apollo crew was so clearly formed under terrestrial conditions.
Long Ago Moons
An alternative theory is that conditions on the moon billions of years ago were, like, the total opposite of what they are now, and that allowed the rock to form as is. Nemchin and his crew found the asteroid catapult a more reasonable theory.
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