Posted on 02/03/2011 12:34:20 AM PST by Islander7
It was 1971. She was 7. And he was Stuart Roosa, the astronaut who would fly the command module and orbit the moon while Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell spent 33 hours on the surface.
Apollo 14 was America’s third trip to put men on the moon. It followed the ill-fated Apollo 13 and recaptured the heart of the nation as Shepard and Mitchell successfully gathered 93 pounds of moon rocks, took a four-hour hike and whacked two golf balls with a club Shepard had brought along.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
But they germinated and grew -- loblolly pines, sycamores, sweet gums, redwoods and Douglas firs. In the 1970s, they were planted around the world. There’s one at the White House and one each in Brazil and Switzerland, and one was given to the Emperor of Japan, according to a website that tracks them. Mississippi State University has a big one, planted in 1975.
Seeds are pretty tough things. Many are adapted to being swallowed whole by birds and other animals, enduring the extreme low and high pH environments of respective parts of their digestive systems, and finding a way to take root after landing on the surface of the ground as part of the critters’ poop. It would be more startling to find that a little trip around the moon and back posed serious difficulties to the viability of most seeds.
Interesting stuff.
Of course NASA has a different mission now, in the Age of Obama, it’s mission is -Muslim outreach.
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