The Arching Sky Is Calling Spacemen Back to Their Trade

Glad we're marking milestones, but I hope the admins fix a significant historical error... https://t.co/tNkx9Z7rdD

— NTodd - Antifa IT Support 🇺🇦🐸 (@ntoddpax) January 22, 2026

While we wait for NASA to correct their post¹ about Apollo 5, let's look at what the crew of Apollo 17 was saying to a joint session of Congress on this date in '73.  First, CDR Cernan: 

The symbol of our path² of Apollo 17 is one that goes far beyond our flight, and it is one that goes far beyond what we really think of the entire mission of Apollo now, but we feel it very symbolic of our country in that we have a bust of Apollo, a gold bust of Apollo, representing not just Apollo but representing mankind, representing his intelligence, representing his wisdom. Uniquely, this bust of Apollo is not looking behind, but he is looking ahead. He is looking into the future. He is not turning in upon himself and feeling sorry for his own ills, but he is looking out to the future and accepting the challenge of that future. 

To go along with this symbol of mankind is the American eagle that is superimposed upon the moon. 

It is not basking in the accomplishments of this last decade in space, but utilizing the information and the experience from those accomplishments and projecting and thrusting out further into the future, leading mankind into that freedom of space as he has led mankind for the last 200 years. 

I like the symbology; sad it took over 50 years for Apollo's twin sister to get us back up there.  Now a quick bit from CMP Evans:

While Gene and Jack were down on the surface of the moon, as I jokingly say, getting their space suits all dirty and picking up rocks, I was fortunate enough to be flying around the moon, and hopefully I developed a capability, that man can perform in space. No matter how well his cameras and his sensors and his instruments operate, man has the capability to observe, describe and then interpret. This is notwithstanding the fact that a lot of instruments also are able to see and look at more than man can. But man as a computer can correlate the two processes together.

That is a good example of what Cory Doctorow calls a "centaur".  Anyway, we'll let the last person to set foot on the moon, LMP Schmitt, have the last word:

I would like first to tell you about a place I have seen in the solar system. This place is a valley on the Moon, now known as the Valley of Taurus-Littrow. Taurus-Littrow is a name not chosen with poetry in mind, but, as with many names, the mind's poetry is created by events. Events surrounding not only 3 days in the lives of three men but also the close of an unparalleled era in human history. 

The Valley, as I think of it now, however, has been unchanged by being a name on a distant planet while change has governed the men who named it. The Valley has been less altered by being explored than have been the explorers. The Valley has been less affected by all we have done than have been the millions who, for a moment, were aware of its towering walls, its visitors, and then its silence...

The Valley has watched the unfolding of thousands of millions of years of time. Now it has dimly and impermanently noted man's homage and footprints. Man's return is not the concern of the Valley-only the concern of man.

I never realized that Jack isn't just a curmudgeonly scientist, but kinda poetic in his own way, too.

Selah.

1 - To wit: "Nine months later, the lunar module was tested again as part of the crewed Apollo 7 mission."  The LM did not fly on Apollo 7, which only used the Block II CSM, but rather was tested by the crew of Apollo 9 in March '69 using LM-3.

2 - I believe the transcript is also in error.  Geno's clearly describing the mission patch, not 'path'.

Update: 2 hours later, they deleted the post, but have not put up a corrected version.