Earthrise

I first met Edgar when I volunteered at the Institute of Noetic Sciences when it was located in Palo Alto, California, not far from Stanford University. My job was to assist with office work and help type up a guest list for an early fundraiser. Today IONS is located in Petaluma, California. 

I had just graduated from Syracuse University and wanted to live and work in the Bay Area.

He was reserved, highly intelligent, hard working, kind, and sincere.

I grew up watching the televised Apollo spaceflights in the living room of our family home in Rochester, New York. I was glued to the set, especially during the tense moments when the Apollo 13 spacecraft malfunctioned. When the Apollo 13 team finally made it back to Earth, it was a powerful moment for me. Originally, Edgar Mitchell and Alan Shepard were scheduled for Apollo 13, but Alan had ear problems and could not fly at this time. Edgar and Alan were then scheduled to fly Apollo 14.

Edgar led an extraordinary life. He grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, as a farm boy. On his way to school, he walked past the home of early rocket scientist Dr. Robert Goddard. Edgar was 17 (and preparing to start college at Carnegie Mellon) when the alleged UFO crashed in a rancher’s field near his hometown. He said the town was abuzz about the news splashed across the Roswell Daily Record headline—“RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Rowell Region.” As a boy Edgar didn’t live far from the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico when the atomic bomb was first tested in 1945. In addition, I’ve always been interested in Edgar’s work and his books about consciousness, the cosmos and space exploration. I enjoyed reading his acclaimed book, The Way of the Explorer.

Edgar and I worked together on the book for years. It was a synergistic process. Typically we had a designated time to talk on the phone every Tuesday morning. It was a challenging but fun process. Edgar was easy to work with and very conscientious.

Yes. That took quite a while. Even writing the sidebar called “What’s up with the Moon?” wasn’t easy. Thankfully, research scientist Dr. Juliane Gross, who works with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the American Museum of Natural History, read over my copy and made sure the science was sound. But I enjoy science and Edgar was very patient with his explanations. It took time to understand how their Saturn V rocket separated through its early stages, and it wasn’t easy to understand the complex transposition and docking procedure when the Lunar Module connected to the tip of the Command Module spacecraft. Once in orbit around the Moon, Edgar and Alan climbed into the smaller Lunar Module, which then took them down to the lunar surface as their “home away from home.”

He didn’t like the question, “What did it feel like to walk on the Moon?” But he knew people wanted to know and he gave it his best shot to answer. He said he was an explorer, exploring a new world. He would describe what he saw on the lunar surface and all the work he had to do when he was there, such as completing the mission’s science experiments.

After Edgar walked on the Moon and his major tasks were completed, he had time to look out the window and relax as he rode in the Command Module back to Earth. The spacecraft turned (like a rotisserie) so that one side of the craft wouldn’t overheat in relation to the Sun. This revolving process allowed Edgar to see a beautiful display of the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and Earth as the craft turned. It was a ringside seat to the cosmos and quite a visual treat. During this time Edgar had a consciousness expanding experience where he felt at one with the universe. He wasn’t sure what was going on at the time—and when he got home he spent years trying to figure out what had happened to him during that flight home. He decided the word, “Samadhi,” which is a Sanskrit term for a high state in meditation where the self and universe merge, best described what happened. He told me other people have described similar experiences, but often don’t talk about it.

Yes. Edgar said that he and the other Apollo moonwalkers could be called “ETs” because when they walked on the Moon, they were extraterrestrials from Earth visiting that heavenly body. Edgar believed we are not alone in the universe and he spoke about the cosmos as teeming with life. In recent years, astronomers have said there could be billions of habitable planets throughout the universe, based on findings from NASA’s large space telescopes such as the Kepler Spacecraft. It’s exciting to imagine what the future holds in space exploration.