Forty Years Ago

On this date forty years ago, Apollo 17 left for the Moon in a spectacular night launch.  It was the last Apollo lunar mission.  As Apollo 17 commander, Eugene Cernan became the last Apollo astronaut to stand on the lunar surface, and he remains the latest human to do so.  Cernan has often remarked that he never dreamed he would hold that second distinction for so long.

Indeed, there are no firm plans for anyone to take that distinction away from him any time soon.  Russia and China have anounced their intentions to land people on the Moon, but they're both still many years away from doing so.  Various nations have expressed interest in joining an international program to build a lunar base, but that doesn't seem to have gotten past the talking stage so far.  Private efforts to put humans back on the Moon are underway, as well, but their timetables are extremely soft.

So, Cernan could well remain the most recent human to stand on the Moon fairly deep into the twenty-first century.  There are grounds to speculate, however, that the next person on the Moon will be the first of a steady stream.