| ....the moon. Alan Bartlett "Al" Shepard (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998), was the first American to travel into space, however it was 10 years later, at age 47 and the oldest astronaut in the program, that Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission Shepard made his second space flight as Commander of Apollo 14 from January 31 – February 9, 1971, America's third successful lunar landing mission. This was the first mission to successfully broadcast color television pictures from the surface of the Moon, using a vidicon tube camera. (The color camera on Apollo 12 provided a few brief moments of color telecasting before it was inadvertently pointed at the Sun, ending its usefulness.) It was whilst on the Moon, Shepard used a Wilson six-iron head attached to a lunar sample scoop handle to drive golf balls. Despite thick gloves and a stiff spacesuit which forced him to swing the club with one hand, Shepard struck two golf balls; driving the second, as he jokingly put it, "miles and miles and miles". |
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...unlike a maze, a labyrinth has only one possible route. In colloquial English, labyrinth is generally synonymous with "maze", but many contemporary scholars observe a distinction between the two: maze refers to a complex branching (multicursal) puzzle with choices of path and direction; while a single-path (unicursal) labyrinth has only a single path to the center. A labyrinth in this sense has an unambiguous route to the center and back and is not difficult to navigate. In Greek mythology the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, which was eventually killed by the hero Theseus. Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it. Neil Armstrong's boots (size 9 1⁄2 medium)—are still on the moon, along with nine other pairs of boots worn during the Apollo missions. When the Apollo astronauts collected moon rocks, they had to jettison their boots to compensate for the additional weight they brought back. Three decades on the moon have taken a toll. The metal buckles and snaps on the boots would be fine. No oxygen on the moon, so no oxidation and rust. But the silicone soles and synthetic fabrics have probably off-gassed and degraded. Should anyone try to retrieve them, there's a good chance the shoes would turn to powder if touched |
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