In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)

Eugene Cernan: Self

Quotes 

• Michael Collins : I think we were very aware of the situation in Vietnam, because a lot of our friends were flying airplanes in combat in Vietnam. And there would we have been, had we not been in the space program.

  Eugene Cernan : I guess I can sort of admit it now, I've admitted it a little bit to a few friends, I've always had a guilt complex, to some degree. That was my war, good or bad, whether it was a good war or a bad war, we're not discussing it, but that was my war, to fight for my country, and my buddies were getting shot at and shot down and in some cases captured, and I was getting my picture on the front page of the paper. And I've always felt that they fought my war for me. They look at it totally different. They said, "You were doing something that this country needed more than anything else at the time. You were part of a program, the only thing we had to hold our head high and be proud of."

• Eugene Cernan : [about the Apollo 1 fire]  The accident occurred in January, at the end of January, the 27th, and we're burying our guys at Arlington, and I wasn't sure if we were burying the entire Apollo program, or three of our, three of our buddies.

• Eugene Cernan : I hold the world speed record downhill, in a Rover. I think it was 17 kilometers per hour, downhill.

  Harrison Schmitt : I think even Gene Cernan, with all his test pilot macho, thought that was a little fast.

• Eugene Cernan : [about being selected as an astronaut]  One day, you're just Gene Cernan, young naval aviator, whatever. And the next day, you're an American hero. Literally. And you have done nothing.

• Eugene Cernan : [referring to Apollo 17's liftoff]  I had control of that vehicle right in the palm of my hands. If the guidance failed or started to stray or went somewhere we didn't like or the ground didn't like, I could flip a switch, and I could control seven, over seven and a half million pounds of thrust with this handle and fly the thing to the Moon myself. And I guarantee you, I had practiced it and trained for it so many times, I almost dared, I almost dared her to quit on me. Every breath she breathed, I breathed with her. She was, she was uniquely something special, and what a hell of a ride she gave us.

• Eugene Cernan : In Earth orbit, the horizon's just slightly curved. When you head on out to the Moon, in very short order, and you get a chance to look back at the Earth, that horizon slowly curves around in upon himself, and all of sudden you're looking at something that is very strange, but yet is very, very familiar, because you're beginning to see the Earth evolve.

• Eugene Cernan : We went into darkness after being in daylight the whole time on the way to the Moon. And then we went into darkness. And we're in the shadow... of the Moon.