There is no shortage of heroic stories coming out of the trips astronauts have made to the moon, and it does not look like they are going to slow down anytime soon.
Moreover, for what it’s worth, most people involved in these stories seem quite fond of retelling them as well, so it is a win-win for everyone.
Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke recently recalled an incident which, according to him, could have ended his life on the moon.
Duke, feeling inspired by the sensation of being on the moon, decided to try out some of the local physics, and started to perform acrobatic feats or as he puts it, they were “horsing around,” which he would never get a chance to repeat back on Earth.
However, he did not account for the heavy weight of his backpack, which contained all the vital life support systems that kept him alive in the dangerous atmosphere of the moon.
Duke shared: “The backpack weighed as much as I did. So I went over backwards. It’s a fiberglass shell, and it contained all your life-support systems. If it broke, I was dead.”
He tumbled and fell backward, landing right on top of his precious gear.
Lucky for him, there was no apparent damage to any of the systems.
Duke spent some time evaluating his suit to confirm that there was no further risk to his life, and he was quite shaken up by the incident afterward.
He told the Business Insider: “My heart was pounding. John Young, my commander, came over and looked down and says, ‘That wasn’t very smart, Charlie.’ And I said, ‘Help me up, John,’ and I got real quiet.”
He added: “You could hear the pumps running. And I said, ‘Well, I think I’m OK.'” I learned a lesson: Never do anything in space that you haven’t practiced. And we had not practiced the high jump.”
His fellow astronauts were reportedly just as worried as well after helping him up.
This is probably far from the only such story that is going to come out from the amazing trips to the moon undertaken by these brave astronauts.
Also, hopefully, observers are never going to hear one with a tragic ending, despite the huge potential for that in this kind of environment.
