Carolina QuotesAnd then looking off to the northwest over this way was—as far as the eye could see—was just the rolling terrain of lunar surface, you know, shades of gray. It was really an impressive sight.
Charles Duke
Carolinian
Source
Oral history interview by Doug Ward, 12 March 1999; NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
- form
- interview
- work
- NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project
- year
- 1999
Cite this record
“And then looking off to the northwest over this way was—as f…” Charles Duke. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-989569A161. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/989569a161
More from Charles Duke
But of course the rover’s still there. Dead—battery dead. Experiments there. Power source gone. But unless a meteorite’s hit there, I—those old footprints are still there.
And I looked up in—one afternoon and there was a contrail going over. And—early days of jets, you didn’t see many contrails back then. And I said, you know, “Gosh, it’d be nice to make a contrail. I wonder what that’d be like?” And I started dreaming about flying airplanes then. I went on to the Naval Academy. They gave me a couple of rides in a open-cockpit, bi-wing seaplane called the N3N Yellow Peril. And I was hooked from that moment on.
I was so excited, I couldn’t get out “Tranquility Base.” It came out sort of like “Twangquility,” you know. And so it was, “Roger, Houston. Twangquility Base here.” Let’s see, what did I say? No, it was, “Roger, Twangquility Base. We copy you down. We’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. But we’re breathing again.” And I believe that’s true—was a true statement. It was spontaneous, but it was true.