Gene Cernan running

[Kiwi]

True to form, Margamatix started another subject in the thread about Bart's 5:1 Russian superiority claim, and in replying I forgot to start another thread.

kiwi said:

margamatix said:

Incidentally, I can also point you in the direction of footage showing Gene Cernan running as fast as he can while on the moon (and singing a song to boot) , but moving no further or higher than he would on Earth. Would you like to see it?

Okay, I'll play your little game because I have the Apollo 17 DVDs here, courtesy of AJV.

But tell me a few things first.

1. What is your source for the information that Cernan is running as fast as he can? Certainly not some conspiracy web site, I hope. A reputable source, please.

2. Have you found the relevant section in the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and examined what is stated there about the activity?

3. Please describe the activity, duration, dialogue, sun angle and background so that I can look it up on the DVDs. No doubt the words of the song will help.

I am not aware of Cernan ever running as fast as he could during the mission. I recall him saying something about what a comfortable, sustainable gait was and how ski-poles could help in the case of a long walk-back to the lunar module if the rover broke down.

[Kiwi]

In the meantime, while we await Margamatix's input, here are some comments from Gene Cernan about one-sixth gravity and mobility on the moon.

From the Apollo 17 Lunar Surface Journal, "Geology Station 5 at Camelot Crater." These excerpts are from the CD-ROM version of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. The online version may be a little different.

146:36:34 Cernan: Boy, I tell you, watch when you back up. (Garbled) you already...

146:36:37 Schmitt: (Garbled) told you.

146:36:38 Cernan: ...learned that. (Pause)

[Gene makes his way out of the boulder field to take cross-Suns from the south; Jack moves north out of the TV picture to take a cross-Sun from that direction. Gene's photos are AS17-145-22136 to 22138. Jack's is AS17-133-20328. Jack also takes a "locator" to the Rover, AS17-133- 20329.]

[Schmitt -- "I was trying to get Gene to work on a bigger boulder just to the right of where I was standing here. It was one I was looking at earlier; and he set up at a different boulder and I was afraid we were going to lose the opportunity to get the structures. This is one of the few times -- that I remember, anyway -- that he didn't follow the lead I was trying to get him to take on the sampling. Also, there were fractures and planes in the bigger boulder that he could have sampled without bending over."]

[Cernan -- "Twenty years later, Jack's just got a better memory about some of the details of the sampling. If you had something on your mind at the time, the pictures and transcripts will tend to bring them back. And, if you didn't have them on your mind at the time, there's nothing to recall. But I do remember being in that boulder field and that you really did have to watch your step. We were hopping around between rocks and boulders and you could have tripped on even a foot-high boulder. And you definitely didn't want to fall on another rock or boulder. I won't say that it was 'precarious' but it certainly was a challenging traverse through there. It wasn't something you could train for, because there wasn't any way to really train for the one-sixth gravity. There was a training device called the Peter Pan rig (with harnesses for the simulation of some aspects of one-sixth gravity) which was used early on; but I don't think I used it after Apollo 10. But, with a little common sense, you can adapt. I mean, you don't go in there dumb and blind. You know there are boulders and, by this time in the mission, you certainly knew how to get around in one-sixth gravity. If you jumped off the LM for the first time and, right away, had to walk around in this boulder field, you wouldn't have the aggressiveness -- and caution -- we had. You wouldn't be adapted yet to one-sixth gravity. You wouldn't know the most productive ways of getting around and you wouldn't know the pitfalls as well."]

And later...

146:50:20 Cernan: Jack, do you read me?

146:50:21 Schmitt: Yeah. (Pause) Hello, Houston.

[Gene turns south to get out in the open.]

146:50:24 Parker: Hello, 17. Loud and clear. We'd like you to leave immediately, if not sooner. (Pause)

[Gene switches from a running gait to a gallop.]

[Schmitt -- "Gene doesn't seem to have picked up the rolling gait that you need to have in order to use a stride rather than a hop. And that may just be because he never did any cross-country skiing. It's a fairly natural motion, I think, for a cross-country skier."]

[Cernan -- "Each individual adapts in a different way, but the results are basically the same. Some guys skip; some guys hop. And you pick a way of getting around that gives you the greatest comfort and mobility and productivity. I moved around in a half-dozen different ways and found I liked the old fifth-grade skip, because I could cover eight or ten feet in the air and come down - with stability - on both feet. Boom boom and up again. That was my way of really moving across the surface without expending a lot of energy. And that's probably why, subconsciously, I went that way rather than wobbling from side to side. Subconsciously, you sought a way of getting around that gave you a sense of security and required the least amount of energy. And I got my energy out of my knees by springing up like that. You shouldn't say, rigidly, 'you have to do it in this fashion'. It's like a golf swing, to some degree. You'll find a number of good golfers with totally different swings."]

146:50:40 Cernan: (Singing) Hippity-hoppity, hippity-hoppity, hippity-hopping over hill and dale.

[Cernan -- "I don't know where I got the song from, but it's got to be a thousand years old. Some cowboy singer or something. This was fun! My feet just got far enough apart for stability when I hit the ground and then I could spring up with both of them. I was doing a little bit of the cross-country stride in the beginning, but I wasn't doing it with strides as big as Jack's, going way left and way right like he did. You were less balanced like that than when you were skipping, so I switched."]

[Gene now switches to a kangaroo or bunny hop. During our review of Station 6, it occurred to Gene that a tendon injury suffered about 5 to 6 weeks before the flight may have influenced his choice of gait. See his comments at 165:59:32.]

[Cernan -- "In order to stop, I had to take a couple of steps to transition from the skip to a walk. It's like a horse that's in a gallop and slows down to a trot."]

146:50:53 Cernan: (Singing) Hippity-hopping along. (Pause)

[In 1996, Andrew Chaikin discovered that the song Gene is singing is "Mule Train". He stumbled upon a copy of the words and music, albeit without information on the authors or publication date. The lyrics Chaikin found are:

Mule Train.
Mule Train.
Clippity cloppin' over hill and plain.
Seems as how they never stop.
Clippity clop,
Clippity clop,
Clippity, clippity, clippity, clippity, clippity cloppin' a long.

Journal Reader Brian Lawrence has provided a history of the song. "It was written by veteran composers Hy Heath, Johnny Lange, and Fred Glickman, published by Walt Disney, and heard in the Republic Pictures western 'Singing Guns' (1950). In 1949 there were at least four versions on the Billboard charts, by Frankie Laine, Bing Crosby, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Vaughn Monroe - who appeared in 'Singing Guns'. Its popularity led to an Academy Award nomination, but it lost out to 'Mona Lisa'. A late addition to the record charts came from Gene Autry, who also obtained the rights to use the song as the title for one of his self-produced westerns, 'Mule Train' (1950). I don't know, but it seems likely that Autry would have used the song in his TV series, 'The Gene Autry Show' (1950-55). Therefore it may be that Gene Cernan remembered the lyrics from Gene Autry's films and TV shows." Gene Cernan was born in 1934 and was 15 when the song became popular.]

[Gene reaches the Rover and stows the gnomon. Fendell pans away clockwise.]

146:51:07 Cernan: Okay. My golly, this time goes fast!

146:51:10 Parker: That's affirm.

<Fixed formatting>

[Kiwi]

A little research shows that Cernan was unable to run as fast as he could have due to a recent leg injury which could have forced him out of the mission. Both astronauts were reminded of previous injuries.

From "Geology Station 6":

165:59:29 Cernan: Gnomon is on the Rover. The TGE is on the Rover.

[Fendell finds Gene standing a few feet south, examining the Rover. Jack is beyond him, moving diagonally across the slope and toward the southeast.]

[Schmitt -- "One of the things that bothered me physically was doing a lot of sidehill traversing at Station 6. On going east on the south-facing slope for some distance, the inside ligament on my left leg began to feel fatigued because the right leg was so much down and the left leg was so much up. Most of the stress was on the left leg, and it is the same ligament that I had damaged skiing years before in '58 or '59; and I suspect that that was the reason for that. It was a pretty bad pull and, after it recovered, I never felt it again except for going sidehill right in this part of the traverse. I started to tire and I could feel that ligament. It wasn't bad, but I could tell it wasn't normal."]

[Cernan -- "About five or six weeks before the flight, we were playing softball and I pulled my planteres (a small calf muscle associated with the Achilles tendon). I was running between second and third base and I thought somebody had hit me in the bottom of the right leg with a machete. And I just doubled up. I was on crutches for about a couple, three or four days. If it was ripped, I was done (that is, off the flight). It was strained or pulled but not ripped, I guess, and I had some great concern as to whether the doctors would consider it recovered enough for me to fly. But I guarantee you that, less than a week after I was off the crutches I was in a suit doing EVA training. Hurting like hell. And I really wondered how it would be on the Moon. When we did go, I could feel it the whole time I was doing some of these things, but never to the extent that it either hobbled me or could down my mobility. It just hurt. It had healed very, very quickly and I'm not so sure... And it sounds a little crazy; but I think part of your physical well-being depends on your mental well-being. And I'm not so sure that, mentally, I didn't want to fly that flight so bad that it either healed faster or I didn't know it hurt. There were times during the surface activities that I did feel it; but I don't remember feeling a thing during the stuff we've just gone through at Station 6. Also, it's possible that, subconsciously, the injury may have influenced my choice of hopping and skipping rather than Jack's long, loping stride. When you were hopping, you had to plan on maintaining a special kind of balance each time you came down, but you had two feet supporting you all the time. I'm not sure, but maybe I did hop to make my leg feel more comfortable."]

<Fixed typo>

[Kiwi]

My bad memory -- it was Jack Schmitt, not Gene Cernan, who thought that ski-poles should be available for an emergency walkback, as detailed below:


120:27:01 Schmitt: How is it going, Gene?

120:27:03 Cernan: Fine. I'm on my second stem, here. Or I'm starting on it. How are you coming?

120:27:11 Schmitt: Okay. I'm just about ready to pick up the biggy, geophone 4.

[Jack goes back to the geophone module, taking long running strides. He covers the 50-meter distance in 33 seconds for an average speed of 5.4 kilometers per hour. He takes about 30 strides, each about 5.5 feet in length. Geophone 4 will be emplaced 90 meters south of the geophone module.]

120:27:21 Cernan: (Guffawing) Have a good time.

120:27:24 Parker: Okay. And Geno, how are you doing? We've been watching Jack traipse back and forth across the Moon.

120:27:33 Cernan: I'm getting there, Bob. I'm trying to fit...

120:27:36 Schmitt: Talk about seven league boots.

120:27:41 Cernan: ...Put stem number 2 on.

[Schmitt -- "By now I'm taking longer and longer strides and the running technique is getting to be very much like cross-country skiing. On future missions, either for recreation or for an emergency walkback, you ought to have ski poles available for stabilization. At this point I wasn't breathing hard and I think that, with poles, you could go faster than the Rover can drive (10-12 km/hr on a level surface) without expending much energy. And that way you could greatly extend your driving distance with a Rover. I also think the recreation of choice will be getting out and taking long 'skiing' trips. Just like with cross-country skiing, I think you could almost keep it up indefinitely. And if you had a suit with more hip-and-ankle mobility I think you really could do 10-15 km/hr, a good cross-country speed on flat terrain."]



In the Spacecraft Films' Apollo 17 DVDs, disc 2, EVA 1: ALSEP Deployment, at 1:13:00 Jack Schmitt can be seen slowly running about 50 meters west to place a geophone flag. He describes the geology on the way. At 1:14:34 the above action and dialogue starts and at 1:14:53 he starts running back to the geophone module.

It seems to me that taking strides that are about 5.5 feet long with a degree of lightness that can be easily seen while wearing a suit which partially limited mobility and doubled his weight, indicates that he may indeed be in a one-sixth g environment. However, I have a funny feeling that Margamatix -- not being interested in the truth about Apollo -- may not want to notice this.

[PhantomWolf]

Just for some fun I threw my Apollo 11 EVA DVD into the player and watched it at 2x speed. The first thing I noticed was that for people wearing hulking great spacesuits, they sure are light on their feet. I've seen people wearing only t-shirt and shorts that would have been more lethargic in their movements. Add to that they they didn't move like a normal person would, sort of more like a thunderbird's puppet, leaning forwards and walking on their toes and that arm movements, camera movements, the flag as it was being set up, several thrown items and items hanging loose from the suit all moved at ridulously fast speeds. Switching from the TV footage to the 16mm just added to the comedy spectacle. I watched 1 and a half hours of footage and while some parts could be claimed to have been filmed at double speed and then slowed down, others wuld be impossible to do so, including would have to have been done by Neil Armstrong running backwards in a most ackward fashion on at least two occasions.

If it was done as claimed by margamatrix, the guys in the suits would have had to have been some sort of superbeings.

[Kiwi]

Uh-oh! Margamatix has taken umbrage.

margamatix said:

..."Kiwi"- snide and offensive person, to whom I never reply...

Again, he's got it wrong. I'm actually an extremely nice person who only occasionally says snide and offensive things. Besides, I capitalise his name.

Obviously, someone else whom he deems replyable will have to re-ask him to reveal the footage he mentioned:

Incidentally, I can also point you in the direction of footage showing Gene Cernan running as fast as he can while on the moon (and singing a song to boot) , but moving no further or higher than he would on Earth. Would you like to see it?

[nomuse]

Well, maybe if some of the rest of us post in this thread, Margamatix might actually come out here with the doubled-film-speed stuff. I guess he didn't want to be alone in a room with Kiwi.

I think this is one that will never go far, though, as Margamatix seems to be of that small part of the population who lacks the wiring to understand acceleration on an instinctive level. I've met people who can completely not comprehend basic mechanics, like a lever, and I do suspect there is a possible genetic element; like color blindness or perfect pitch.

Not intending to be insulting here. I have to question where he is coming from when he appears to say the astronauts should leap higher but fall at the same rate as on Earth. Or the earlier claim that an "eleven ton" LM falling six feet on the moon is equivalent to a two ton LM falling on Earth. This isn't just an algebriac manipulation -- it gives the wrong answers for velocity and force. Perhaps in his mind the astronauts MASS 1/6 but are still operating under an acceleration of 32 f/s^2?