Return to the moon by U.S. is overdue

President Bush's plan to propose a permanent return to the moon cannot help but stir memories in an Apollo moonwalker -- and raise new hopes for potential exploration. As the last of 12 men to step on the moon, and the only scientist to do so, my recollections are as clear today as 31 years ago.

It was December 1972. President Nixon had just been re-elected; the war in Vietnam was in its final years. We landed in a spectacular valley known as Taurus-Littrow on the southeastern edge of the Sea of Serenity. Apollo 17 was to be the last of the manned American moon missions for at least three decades, but we didn't know it then.

Taurus-Littrow as a name was not chosen with poetry in mind (Taurus was the mountain range above the valley, and Littrow was the crater nearby). The mind's poetry, however, is created not by names but by events -- events surrounding not only three days in the lives of three astronauts but the close of an unparalleled decade in human history.

We first viewed the valley from orbit. During our week at the moon, we witnessed its face slowly change from the deep coldness of forbidding streaks of sunrise shadow and light, to the friendly morning contrasts needed for safe landings, and then to the harsh, featureless glare of a desert's noon. In their turn, the valley's meteor craters of Camelot and Cochise, the avalanche-covered Jefferson-Lincoln Ridge and the deep dust of Tortilla Flats reflected the sun's changing mood.

Our landing approach was sudden; we pitched forward. Triangular windows revealed the rocks and craters and looming mountain walls. A hurried glance to the right showed that friends on Earth did not fail as navigators, and the moon ship Challenger settled into the streaking dust rushing away from the soundless power of the rocket blazing beneath us. Racing against a relentless clock that determined our schedule, we hurried to step out into this now familiar, yet still untouched, new land.

With spacesuits on and checked, and the spacecraft hatch open to the airless reach of Taurus-Littrow, we slid down the ladder and finally touched, for ourselves and all who brought us there, the sparkling gray dust of eons. We were on the moon. The preparations for three days of exploration obscured the newness for a while longer. This spacecraft and friend of so many months of testing and training filled my thoughts and eyes. It was as if it knew that it would be left behind when we departed.

Then, for the first time, I was able to move away in long strides, like running on a giant trampoline. Finally our spider-like lunar module, Challenger, with its flashing, colored reflections, became a separate part of the total magnificent scene.

One of the most majestic panoramas within the view and experience of humankind lies within the valley of Taurus-Littrow. The roll of dark hills across the valley floor blends with bright slopes that sweep evenly upward, tracked like snow, to the rocky tops of the massifs, 7,000 feet above and in reverse silhouette against a black sky. Hardest to get used to is the sky--blacker than black and holding a sun brighter than any desert sun of Earth experience.

The valley does not have the jagged, youthful majesty of the Himalayas or of the valleys of the Rockies or of the glacially symmetrical fjords in the north countries, or even of the now-so- intriguing rifts of Mars. Rather, it has the subdued and ancient majesty of a valley whose origins appear as nearly one with its star.

The massif walls rise to heights that compete well among other valleys of the planets, but they rise and stand with a calmness and unconcern that speak silently of 4 billion years of continuity. Still, the valley is not truly silent for those who study it: Its cliffs reveal pages of rocky history down dusty slopes. Its craters act as the archives of the sun.

Leaving Taurus-Littrow was not easy. Maybe it was the things left unseen and undone, or maybe the 7-1/2 years of training and commitment that came to a conclusion too soon, or maybe it was the uncertainty about when others would return.

The valley of Taurus-Littrow has watched the unfolding of thousands of millions of years of time. It has added much to our understanding of the history of the Earth and solar system. Only dimly and impermanently, however, did it note our work and footprints. Not knowing that it would be so long before anyone might return, upon leaving I challenged the next generation to leave their own footprints away from Earth.

Returning to the moon to stay, as Bush has proposed, would mark a change in human history comparable to our species' movement out of Africa about 150,000 years ago. If Americans are once again leading this effort, that return to stay also would mark a political milestone comparable to the first permanent settlement of free men and women in the New World.

Further, the resources of the moon will not only support its settlers and others in an expanding space civilization, but will provide another alternative to the accelerated use of Earth's fossil fuels to meet a growing population's demand for energy and improved standards of living.

As Apollo 17 explored Taurus-Littrow in 1972, we were unaware that the soils beneath our feet contained commercially significant quantities of helium-3, a future fuel for fusion electrical power. Realization of the importance of the discovery of helium-3 in all the soils of the moon was left to young engineers at the University of Wisconsin about 13 years later.

Now, however, the importance of helium-3 resources on the moon argues for a partnership between private investors and the government in the difficult work of returning to the moon to stay. Such a partnership would not only significantly reduce the burden on the American taxpayer but also would add greatly to the benefits of a moon settlement to all humankind.

Apollo was the first "Lewis and Clark" expedition among the planets. Now we must decide how the "railroads" and the "settlers" will reach their surfaces.

Apollo astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, a former U.S. senator from New Mexico, is chairman emeritus of the Annapolis Center and an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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