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2 2 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 | SXSW.COM Even Decades Later, Apollo Missions Still Awe and Inspire By Rob Preliasco Photo Caption. Photo credit For generations, we have been living in a world in which something that seemed fantastic to people of the past is an established fact: we have been to the moon. The first landing was 50 years ago this coming July, and SXSW is celebrating with a featured session with former astro- naut Charlie Duke, former Apollo flight director and Johnson Space Center director Gerry Griffin, cur- rent Johnson Space Center Deputy Director Vanessa Wyche, and Bobak Ferdowsi, systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "I look up at the moon, and I get this real sense of satisfaction—I've been there," said Duke, who explored and conducted experiments on the moon during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. "You can remember the general terrain when you think about your landing site, and the dramatic con- trast between the bright moon and the dark sky … we felt right at home." Duke and fellow astronaut John Young stayed on the moon for 71 hours, ranging about on foot and in a lunar rover across a 16-mile area and sleeping in hammocks in their tight lunar module spacecraft, where they tracked in dust from outside just like on any terrestrial camping trip. During their expedition, they gathered geologic samples, measured local radi- ation and the sun's solar winds, and conducted other experiments. "You weren't overcome with the beauty of it, but it was still the most spectacular desert you could imagine," Duke said of the lunar land- scape. "[It was] untouched, unspoiled. I never got tired of just looking around the moon." The Apollo program ran from 1961 to 1975 and put 12 men on the moon between 1969 and 1972. We have not been back, but the way forward for humanity in space, to Mars and the rest of the solar system, may be through emulating these bygone achievements. However, this time it will be in an international and gen- der-integrated effort. "Getting back to the moon, I think, is extremely important to do," said Griffin, who was a flight director in the control room during the Apollo program and later held many senior administrative roles at NASA. "We don't know everything we need to know about the moon, but it also gives us a good place to depart from for Mars." Without Earth's gravity to con- tend with, launching a Mars mission from the moon is much simpler than from Earth, Griffin explained. He also envisions a permanently crewed facility on the moon, a surface-bound International Space Station, which can be used for experiments and as a staging area for missions into deep space. Charlie Duke on the moon: April 21, 1972. Courtesy of NASA on The Commons