One Lucky Guy
Artwork Description
“It seemed I could run forever on the Moon and my legs would not get tired,” recollects Apollo 12 moonwalker Alan Bean. “There was a reason, however. On Earth I weighed about 150 pounds and the 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.”
“Time on the Moon was limited so we learned quickly how to run in a spacesuit. The suit is hard to move at the knee and hip joints. Moving about is most readily accomplished by keeping the legs relatively stiff and using mostly an 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 – my legs would only have to carry 25 pounds.”
Over 40 years ago, on November, 14, 1969, Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean, with fellow Apollo 12 astronauts, Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon, left Earth for the Moon. Five days later on Nov. 19, Bean stepped off the lunar module Intrepid and onto the Moon’s Ocean of Storms and became the fourth human to walk on another planet.
Alan Bean paints the Apollo missions from a perspective no other can: as one who has been there. In March, 2012, Capt. Bean celebrated his 80th birthday. We’ve set the edition size of the self-portrait “One Lucky Guy” at 80 pieces as a tip of the hat to this event. This Fine Art Canvas Edition is a superb example of Alan’s unique lunar painting style and features Bean himself on the Moon. This edition is personally signed by astronaut, moonwalker and the First Artist on Another World, Capt. Alan Bean.
