Golf on the moon? Apollo XIV

"(I) think you're finks" (Edgar D. Mitchell to Mission Control Febuary 5,1971)

With Apollo XIII’s failure to reach the moon the NASA decided Apollo XIV should do the mission that Lovell’s crew had been selected for.

With the Command/Service Module (CSM) “Kitty Hawk” and the Lunar Module (LM) “Antares” Apollo XIV approached one of the most difficult landings that had ever been done. There landing at Fra Mauro was planed because it was close to what was thought by geologists to be one of the newer craters on the moon.

Alan Shepard at first could not find a landing spot for “Antares” but he finally found one that was just large enough for the LM but was on an 8% slope which made sleeping conditions uncomfortable. After reconfiguring “Antares” for takeoff Shepard and Mitchell were given permission to go out for EVA. They did what most of the other crews have done. To start out they went and set up experiments and cameras. This time the camera was capped to avoid an accident like the one that happened during the Apollo VII Mission. After getting all of the experiments set up they went to sleep. Because of the time involved with the removing and refitting the space suits they slept in their suits, this proved to be quite uncomfortable. Because they were on a slope, they would wake up in the low gravity and feeling like the LM had tipped over. They reported that they looked out the windows several times to check that they had indeed not tipped.

They finally contacted Mission Control a half hour before their official wake up call to get going, for the next days activities.

They were supposed to go to the rim of the crater they had landed in and gather rock samples. The purpose of was two fold, to find information on the geology of the moon and to see what sort of distances could be covered by a man in a space suite. The trip to the rim of the crater took them much more time then expected. The rigid suits made the travel up the steep slope very difficult. Their frustration could be heard when the astronauts started to let cuss words slip out on the open band. It was and still is a tradition not to cuss and the only time it happened was at high stress times.

They were concerned that they wouldn’t get the tasks finished however they did compleat them. Before they left Al Shepard got out a suprise that he had brought with him a golf club and several golf balls. He had to hit one-handed and it took him two tries before finally connected with the ball, but as he put it, it went “miles, and miles and miles”.

In total the Apollo XIV spent 33.5 hours on the surface of the moon with 2 EVAs that totaled 9 hours, 25 minutes. They collected 94 pounds (42kg) of rocks and successfully implemented a new handcart to simplify the gathering process.