A Long Voyage to the Moon Outward Odyssey A People’s History of Spaceflight Series editor Colin Burgess A Long Voyage to the Moon The Life of Naval Aviator and Apollo 17 Astronaut Ron Evans Geoffrey Bowman Foreword by Jack Lousma UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS • LINCOLN © 2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Bowman, Geoffrey (Geoffrey Alexander), author. | Lousma, Jack, 1936– writer of foreword. Title: A long voyage to the moon: the life of naval aviator and Apollo 17 astronaut Ron Evans / Geoffrey Bowman; foreword by Jack Lousma. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2021] | Series: Outward odyssey: a people’s history of spaceflight | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020051336 isbn 9781496213198 (hardback) isbn 9781496228260 (epub) isbn 9781496228277 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Evans, Ronald E., 1933– 1990. | Astronauts— United States— Biography. | Project Apollo (U.S.) Classification: lcc tl789.85.e93 b69 2021 | ddc 629.450092 [B]— dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2020051336 Set in Garamond Premier by Laura Buis. For Jan This is your story, too. What is it, I wondered, that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse? — Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff Contents List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xix Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Kansas Kid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Jayhawk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3. The Pilot and Miss Pollom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 4. Wings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 5. Fighting Falcon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 6. Top Guns of Oriskany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 7. Teachers and Pupils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 8. Deke and Al . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 9. Screaming Eagle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 10. Rolling Thunder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 11. Per Ardua ad Astra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 12. El Lago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 13. Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 14. “Go Fever” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 15. Two Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165 16. Footprints in the Dust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 17. Backups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 18. The Rocky Road to Taurus- Littrow. . . . . . . . 209 19. Many a Slip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223 20. Captain America Sets Sail . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235 21. Into the Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 22. The Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261 23. Spaceman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 24. Return to Ticonderoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 25. End of an Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305 26. Apollo- Soyuz and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 27. The Most Alien World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 28. Ad Astra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .337 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .359 Illustrations Following page 134 1. Ron Evans as a child 2. Evans family portrait 3. Ron Evans as a schoolboy 4. Ron Evans on the deck of the uss Wisconsin 5. A glimpse of life in the U.S. Marines 6. Ron Evans becomes a naval aviator 7. Ron and Jan shortly after their wedding 8. Ron Evans at nas Miramar with an f- 8 Crusader 9. vf- 142’s team for the “Top Gun” contest 10. Family man 11. Astronaut selection 12. Medal presentation by Dr. Robert Gilruth 13. Buzz Aldrin, Ron Evans, and Jack Schmitt 14. Apollo 14 backup crew during the Apollo 13 crisis 15. Ron Evans and Gene Cernan in Acapulco 16. Ron Evans and Farouk El- Baz 17. Apollo 17 crew, backup crew, and support crew 18. Apollo 17 crewmen at the base of their Saturn V