Stu Roosa, as Command Module Pilot, stayed aboard Kitty Hawk while his shipmates descended to the Moon's surface. But he was hardly idle while they worked. Roosa had as much or more work to accomplish than Shepard and Mitchell, making observations, taking photographs, and conducting experiments.
Two hundred and fifty thousand miles from home, sixty-nine miles (at best!) from the nearest human being, and spending half his time in radio silence while behind the Moon, Roosa and the other CMPs had the loneliest job in the solar system. Worst of all, I think, must have been the knowledge that if something went wrong on the Moon's surface, there would be nothing one could do except listen and eventually make the long trip home alone, abandoning your comrades' bodies there on another planet.
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Last updated 9 March 2004.
All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless
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Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.