Apollo 14 Astronaut Dies — Only 7 Moonwalkers Still Live

by Andrew Follett

Edgar Mitchell, one of only 12 human beings to walk on the moon, died Friday, meaning only seven moonwalkers still live.

Mitchell, Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa were the crew of Apollo 14, which landed on the moon Feb. 5, 1971. Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the lunar surface.

The remaining men who have walked on the moon are Buzz Aldrin (age 86), Alan Bean (age 83), David Scott (age 83), John W. Young (age 85), Charles Duke (age 80), Eugene Cernan (age 81) and Harrison Schmitt (age 80). Every living person to walk on the moon is past the average American life expectancy of 79 years.

Attempts to get some new moonwalkers, however, aren’t going well.

“The Obama administration has consistently tried to cut NASA’s space exploration budgets in order to fund increases for Earth science programs,” Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Just this year, the president proposed drastically cutting NASA’s exploration systems by more than $440 million dollars while Earth Science accounts have increased by 63 percent over the last 8 years.”

President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are more interested in funding global warming science than going back to the moon. Obama has repeatedly attempted to cut the parts of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that focus on science and exploration, so that money could be redirected to earth science.

The budget of NASA’s Earth Science Mission Directorate, which handles global warming, grew by 63 percent over the last eight years, making it the largest and fastest growing budget of any NASA science program. The directorate’s goal is to help NASA “meet the challenges of climate and environmental change.” The organization is also responsible for global warming models proven to be inaccurate. 

Over the same time period, the general NASA budget grew only by 10.6 percent– just enough to account for inflation.

Even Bill Nye the “Science Guy,” who’s also the CEO of the Planetary Society, has criticized Obama’s attempts to cut NASA’s space exploration and planetary science programs in favor of global warming. NASA’s planetary science program has previously held car washes and bake sales to gain political support to maintain funding.

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