Al Bean was the only artist to walk on the moon. After retiring from the space program at the age of 49 he took up painting full-time, right up until his passing at the age of 86 in 2018. Some of his paintings included real moon dust and others tiny fragments of his mission patch. His paintings sell for approximately $15,000 each.
The narration mentions the plan to use a timer to photograph both Bean and Conrad on the moon. As they were unable to do this, Bean recreated this in several paintings. Not wanting to leave out CM pilot Richard Gordon, in two paintings he depicted all three of them as standing on the moon.
The narration mentions the plan to use a timer to photograph both Bean and Conrad on the moon. As they were unable to do this, Bean recreated this in several paintings. Not wanting to leave out CM pilot Richard Gordon, in two paintings he depicted all three of them as standing on the moon.
Pete Conrad and Al Bean really did float back in to the Command Module naked. As Conrad stated in a letter to Aviation Week magazine on May 27, 1974, Dick Gordon didn't want them bringing moon dust with them. So they took off their spacesuits and long underwear before coming back onboard.
Recent orbiter photos of the moon have located a number of Apollo landing sites, including that of Bean's APOLLO XII. While the resolution was rather low, among other things, one can clearly see the tracks of the footprints of Bean and Conrad, and Surveyor III as well.
After returning to Earth in Episode 7 ("That's All There Is"), astronaut Dick Gordon comments, "I'd just like to go to Pe-Te's and get me some Cajun barbeque!" PeTe's was an actual Cajun barbeque restaurant on Texas State Highway 3, just outside of the entrance to Ellington Field, in Houston. It was closed in 2005
Dick Gordon says he sees the "snowman". This is an arrangement of five craters at the site of the Surveyor III lander that bears a resemblance to an actual snowman. Surveyor, which had been on the moon for over two years, was within walking distance of the Apolli XII landing site. Among the mission objectives was to retrieve instruments from Surveyor and bring them back to earth to examine the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment.