JIM IRWIN-INDOMITABLE ASTRONAUT

Jim Irwin, Colonel, United States Air Force, had a brilliant but challenging career. His is a story of difficult challenges, met, and with hard work and perserverence, overcome.

Jim had what could have seen a life changing experience back in 1961. He had just graduated from the Air Force test pilot school at Edwards Air Force base. One morning as he was teaching a student how to fly, the student lost control of the light aircraft and they crashed. Both were seriously injured. Jim had two broken legs, a broken jaw, many teeth gone, concussion, and multiple lacerations. When Jim arrived at the hospital doctors told him he would probably not fly again. I can imagine his despair. Laying there in the hospital Jim made up his mind he would do everything within his power to heal and to rebuild his body. His mind and spirit were undaunted. With an almost superhuman will Jim went about his self-appointed task. He searched for the optimum combination of diet, rest, and exercise and then day after day, week after week, month after month he made the sacrifice. All the determination, hard work and pain to get back in top shape were not wasted.

Ten years later Jim Irwin, the young Air Force pilot, who the doctors thought only ten years earlier might never walk again, was standing on the Moon.

After leaving NASA, Jim authored a number of books about his life and his experiences as a young boy growing up, a young man in the Air Force, and as a NASA astronaut. He gave me one of those books as a gift, and I treasure it today. He inscribed, "decisions determined destination! - Your grateful brother - Jim Irwin, Apollo 15."

Size:15.5.5x12 image
Acrylic on aircraft plywood, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

PRICE: $28,980 framed SOLD

TAKING US ALL ALONG

Astronaut David Scott is carefully adjusting the high gain antenna on his lunar roving vehicle, the LRV. accurately pointing the antenna to earth wasn’t hard by any means but he had to be precise so it took a little time. His Apollo 15 mission will be the first to be equipped with a LRV and it will allow him and his sidekick Jim Irwin to be much more effective on the moon than we astronauts were on the previous three missions.

Dave and Jim would have their electric car to move between sites of interest while we earlier explorers had only our leg power. This vastly increased mobility was not the most far reaching change that occurred on Apollo 15, it was the television camera. For the first time we had a color television camera that was completely controllable from earth. A flight controller could point the camera and look and listen wherever the engineers and scientists needed.

Think about it: When Ferdinand Magellan sailed with five ships and 270 men in 1519 no one in Europe knew what was happening on his voyage until one ship with 18 men returned. That was almost three years later, with the news that they had made all the way around the earth. Now for the first time in history, all the interested humans on earth can go along with their explorers, experience what they experience, see what they see, and discover what they discover in real time. Even Christopher Columbus had to wait seven months to tell of his voyage and discoveries.

Size:10x11 image
Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

PRICE: $17,110

A JEWEL IN THE HEAVENS

Over the years since I changed my profession from NASA astronaut to space artist I have created several paintings of the earth. I enjoyed doing so because it brought back vivid memories of the always amazing sight of our unique blue and white planet floating in the shiny blackness of space.

Our earth was by far the most beautiful object I saw during my Apollo 12 mission, in November of 1969. the 10-day mission was filled with so many incredible treats for the eyes, views that I had thought about for many years and at last was experiencing, first hand.

Not a single image was a disappointment. Each view out our small spacecraft windows and the vast panoramas I saw through my gold visor as I stood and moved about on the moon was grander and more memorable than I was able to imagine. Perhaps that is why humans have a need to explore…. to enlarge what we can imagine.

I liked my earth planetscapes as I painted each and thought they accurately replicated what I saw with my own astronaut eyes. With the passing of the 37 years since the Apollo 12 mission my astronaut-eyes have gradually been replaced with artist-eyes. I now see the earth in my mind’s eye as much brighter than recorded by our camera and film. As a result of this time passing and the changes in thinking and feeling I paint the earth more boldly colorful now…..more like a bright and incomparable jewel in the heavens. And just think – we get to live our whole lives on that beauty!

--ALAN BEAN

11.5"x 14" image. Acrylic on aircraft board,
heavily textured with MOONDUST

Price $25,510 framed (+sales tax)

THE SOURCE OF INTELLIGENT LIFE

As I looked at our beautiful planet earth from our small command module windows I thought of all the humans that were out there living their lives on that little blue and white ball. It just did not seem possible that the tens of thousands of people I had seen at sporting events and on TV and at shopping malls and driving around in their cars, much less the 6.4 Billion that are alive on our planet right now, could really be hanging on to that tiny sphere so that they wouldn’t fly off into outer space. As we look at my painting we can see the west coast of Africa to the right just turning into night. And to think, most scientists now believe that all of us humans are direct descendants of a handful of women in Africa several hundred thousand years ago. Even those as far away as South America which we can see just coming over the western horizon. Their descendants have journeyed far from Africa to make their homes all over our planet. Their offspring have created the modern world, and all that we have now.

I’ll bet during her probably brief, difficult and dangerous life she looked up at the brightest light in the night sky and wondered what it was, never imagining that her children might visit there someday. My guess is that she thanked her lucky stars for that soft bright moonlight as it helped her avoid the wild animals and human predators that inhabited her difficult and dangerous world.

--ALAN BEAN

18"x 24" image. Acrylic on aircraft board,
heavily textured with MOONDUST

Price $68,550 framed (+sales tax)SOLD

HOW HIGH DID JOHN JUMP?

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured with MOONDUST embedded.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art
Price: $17,050 framed

ONE LUCKY GUY

"It seemed I could run forever on the Moon and my legs would not get tired. There was a reason, however. On Earth, I weighed about 150 pounds and suit and backpack another 150 pounds. On the Moon, with its one-sixth gravity, my equipment and I only weighed a total of 50 pounds. This light weight made me feel as if I were super strong - that I could run forever.

An astronaut learns very quickly to run in a space suit. The suit is stiff and hard to move at the knee and hip joints, but moves easily at the ankle joints. Moving about is most readily accomplished by keeping the legs relatively stiff and using mostly ankle motion. It feels and looks as if you are dancing on tiptoe. If I could bring that one-sixth gravity field back to Earth, I could win the Boston Marathon and never even get tired. And why not? My legs would only have to carry 25 pounds."--Alan Bean

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art 9x12
Price: $16,925 framed

STUDY FOR 'FIRST MEN'

"I guess every astronaut wanted to be the first man on the moon. I know I did. Well if that can’t happen at least one of the first men on the moon. How was it decided? Here is my memory:

To give us the best chance of “landing men on the moon and returning them safely to earth” we first had to fully test the spacecraft and demonstrate all the critical techniques and procedures. This would require a series of flight tests, first in earth orbit and then out to and around the moon. We had a carefully thought out plan as to how many flights and what each would need to accomplish to give us confidence that the first landing attempt would be successful.

To perform these space flights our boss, Deke Slayton, selected six crews of three astronauts each. Wally Schirra’s crew would be the prime crew and would fly the first flight, Apollo 7, with Tom Stafford’s crew as back-up. Tom’s crew would then begin training assigned as prime crew three flights later, and so forth. Frank Borman’s crew would fly Apollo 8 with Neil Armstrong’s crew as back-up. Jim McDivitt’s crew assigned to Apollo 9 with our crew, (Pete Conrad’s crew) as back-up. Tom Stafford’s crew would fly Apollo 10, Neil’s Apollo 11, and Pete’s Apollo 12.

That was the plan; however we also knew that the plan we had created at the start would have to be modified as we went along because of the unanticipated results, some good, and some bad, that always occur with actual flight testing. I believe all eighteen of us thought we had a good chance at attempting the first landing. For Pete, Dick, and I, things went too well. Apollo 11’s crew got the opportunity to make the first attempt. Neil, Buzz, and Mike flew a perfect flight and went into the history books, but all 400,000 of us that helped make apollo a success are in there, somewhere in the fine print, too."-- Alan Bean

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and embedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art 12x8.5 (each) 12x17 (diptych)
Price: $31,700 framed

A MOST EFFECTIVE ENGINEER-ASTRONAUT

By the time John Young was walking around in the Descartes region of the Moon, he was an experienced and accomplished space explorer. He had lived and worked in space on three previous missions: Gemini 3, Gemini 10, and Apollo 10. With his background, he and Charlie Duke would have a shot at performing as flawless a mission as was possible. Well they did; and he did; and John even went on to later fly two demanding space shuttle flights. His record in space is unequalled.

But that is not where he made his greatest contribution, in space, that is. In my opinion it was on the ground, in the work of developing our spaceships, where John´s unique point of view made the most difference. John had an uncanny knack for spotting a flaw or danger or potential trouble spot in the hardware, the software or our operational procedures and techniques.

He not only could see what many of us could not early on, but he would then take it upon himself to get the NASA bureaucracy to understand and address the issue. This was not quick or easy, but John would hold on like a bulldog (he earned a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Tech) until NASA would make the changes necessary to fix the problem.

John Young was one of the most effective engineering astrounauts that I worked with during my 18 years at NASA. I suspect he may have saved a few of our lives along the way.

Size:11.25x15 image
Acrylic on aircraft plywood, heavily textured and embedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

PRICE: $26,450 framed SOLD

FUN IS ANYHERE YOU CAN FIND IT

"Some of my favorite memories of my two moonwalks on Apollo 12 are of just having fun. Sure, every minute on the surface was carefully planned prior to launch, and yes, we had our minds filled with important scientific and engineering concerns and procedures. But, there were just so many strange and wonderful things about this unfamiliar new world. For example, with the moon having only one-sixth the pull of gravity of the earth and also having no atmosphere to slow down moving objects I couldn’t resist seeing how far I could throw an occasional rock or two.

Near the end of our last moonwalk, as I was recovering our solar wind collector, I passed a large piece of discarded aluminum foil insulation. There it was . . . A temptation too shiny to resist. I said, “Pete, I’m going to see how far I can throw this piece of foil.” Pete called back, “wait a minute. I want to watch.”

Now, on earth throwing foil isn’t all that much fun to watch. The foil will flutter and land only a few feet away. But not on the airless moon, where it will move as quickly as if it had been crushed in a tight ball.

As Pete turned to watch I gave the foil my strongest heave. Up, up, up it went, slowly turning over and over. Parts of the foil were flashing in the bright sunlight as it got smaller and smaller . . . Higher and farther away than the best athlete could kick a football on earth.

But now to get back to real scheduled work. Pete and I had to pack up and climb back inside the lunar module with our treasure of experiments and moon rocks. We were still a long way from home."--Alan Bean

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art 19x30
Price: $93,300 framed

CAPTAIN CONRAD UNLOADING THE ALSEP

"One of our primary objectives for the first moonwalk was to unload and deploy the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP). These six experiments were stowed during flight inside a large compartment on the back side of the lunar module. For ease of unstowing and carrying to the deployment site the experiments were mounted on one pallet. Their radioisotope thermoelectric generator was mounted on a second. Both fully loaded packages were fragile, bulky, and relatively heavy – 420 earth pounds, 70 moon pounds.

As the lunar module rested on the surface the ALSEP storage compartment was above normal shoulder height. Because of our limited dexterity in the space suit a system was designed to unlock and move each package horizontally out of the storage compartment supported beneath a short boom using one strap and then using a second strap lower it to the ground.

I have painted Pete tugging on the black and white strap that was connected to a rachet mechanism that allowed Pete to carefully lower the experments package. A few seconds earlier Pete had use the white strap in his left glove to pull the experiement package out of the storage compartment.

The system operated perfectly but as Pete said, “The first thing we noted was that as soon as we put the pacakages down on the surface, they began to accumulate dust.” It was kind of ironic since during tests with the actual flight equipment here on earth we all had to wear dust-free white suits and gloves inside a super clean room. In spite of this all the experiments operated properly sending important scientific data to earth well beyond the design lifetime."--Alan Bean

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art 10.5x10
Price: $16,525 framed

CAPTAIN CONRAD UNLOADING THE ALSEP

"One of our primary objectives for the first moonwalk was to unload and deploy the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP). These six experiments were stowed during flight inside a large compartment on the back side of the lunar module. For ease of unstowing and carrying to the deployment site the experiments were mounted on one pallet. Their radioisotope thermoelectric generator was mounted on a second. Both fully loaded packages were fragile, bulky, and relatively heavy – 420 earth pounds, 70 moon pounds.

As the lunar module rested on the surface the ALSEP storage compartment was above normal shoulder height. Because of our limited dexterity in the space suit a system was designed to unlock and move each package horizontally out of the storage compartment supported beneath a short boom using one strap and then using a second strap lower it to the ground.

I have painted Pete tugging on the black and white strap that was connected to a rachet mechanism that allowed Pete to carefully lower the experments package. A few seconds earlier Pete had use the white strap in his left glove to pull the experiement package out of the storage compartment.

The system operated perfectly but as Pete said, “The first thing we noted was that as soon as we put the pacakages down on the surface, they began to accumulate dust.” It was kind of ironic since during tests with the actual flight equipment here on earth we all had to wear dust-free white suits and gloves inside a super clean room. In spite of this all the experiments operated properly sending important scientific data to earth well beyond the design lifetime."--Alan Bean

Acrylic on aircraft board, heavily textured and imbedded with MOONDUST.
Comes double-framed with documentation.

Original Art 10.5x10
Price: $16,525 framed