WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Earlier this week, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon launch, and this weekend, they’ll celebrate the moon landing.
In all the moon missions, 12 Americans would eventually reach the moon. Anita Mitchell, the former wife of the 6th man who landed on the moon, Ed Mitchell from Apollo 14, lives in West Palm Beach.
Fifty years later, she says her late husband would be worried where mankind is headed.
“He probably would be a little concerned about technology taking over. The higher-tech we get, the higher touch we’re going to need,” she said.
Ed was the Lunar commander for Apollo 14. He walked the moon with Alan Sheppard.
He said it was like wonder flour, the surface of the moon and it was kind of like jumping on a trampoline, kind of fun,” she recalled.
He took a photo of earth from the moon, looking back at us. She says he put the magazine into the camera backward, so Africa is upside down.
“Thousands of years, we have looked up and said I wonder what’s up there but for the first time in mankind’s history, we went up and looked back,” she said.
On the mission, space was limited, and food was rationed. He was shoulder to shoulder with two other men.
“They couldn’t afford war; they couldn’t afford to eat too much food and he likened that to planet earth. We can’t afford what we’re doing,” she said.
In the 50 years, man still hasn’t discovered life outside of earth. He spent much of his later years exploring the possibility.
“Did he believe that there were other intelligent beings in the universes? As he put it, we would be very egotistical to not believe that,” she said.
Perhaps he would be smiling at the idea that man’s wanderlust in the 50 years has pressed far beyond where the eye can see.
“He always felt that there were no limits to the human psyche if we could but explore and know that there were no limits.
Saturday afternoon, at 4:17 and 40 seconds, will be the exact moment when man landed on the moon 50 years ago.
