Al Worden: ‘The loneliest human being’

     

AI Worden

Imagine being alone in a dark place in a forest with cent percent silence...This might be the scariest moment we ever think of..We feel we are completely isolated and lonely but there is man who spent much time with himself leaving all of us by a largest distance possible.. This is the actual definition of loneliness..

 Seven men in the history of humanity stand apart from the rest of us. These are the Apollo command module pilots who spent time alone in orbit around the Moon, while their colleagues walked on the lunar surface. When they were on the far side of the Moon, these astronauts were completely out of contact, and further from Earth, than anyone had ever been before. Or has ever been since. out of these seven only five are alive and one among them is Worden.

        Worden flew to the Moon in July 1971, alongside commander Dave Scott and lunar module pilot Jim Irwin. During his time alone on the command module he entered the record books as the "most isolated human being" ever  - at times his companions being 3,600km (2,235 miles) away on the lunar surface. He was given the job of remote sensing the lunar surface in an isolated capsule.
         When the journalists asked him about his feeling about Appolo mission he said that
                 " It’s kind of funny, everybody’s focussed on those who land on the Moon but their function is to pick up a rock. They’re just out gathering rocks and they bring all those rocks back and they get analysed. In terms of the science, you gather a lot more science from lunar orbit than you can on the surface. I photographed, for example, about 25% of the lunar surface – the first time that had been done. I mapped about that same amount. That’s a lot of data to come back. In fact, I guess they’re still looking at it."
          Experience of being alone in lunar orbit  Worden says:
    There’s a thing about being alone and there’s a thing about being lonely, and they’re two different things. I was alone but I was not lonely. My background was as a fighter pilot in the airforce, then as a test pilot – and that was mostly in fighter airplanes – so I was very used to being by myself. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t have to talk to Dave and Jim any more, except once they came around [when the orbiting command module was above the landing site) and I said “hi”. On the backside of the Moon, I didn’t even have to talk to copilots which leads to unnecessary interruptions in work  and that was the best part of the flight. "
           What Worden actually did in the lunar orbit? in Worden's words
"That’s a funny thing, when you’re out there observing all this and doing all this remote sensing, and the photographing and the-this and the-that, you don’t really have time to think about enjoying the view. You put it in a memory bank and when you get back that you think about all that. I worked 20 hours a day and I’d get three or four hours of sleep a night. So you really don’t have the luxury of the time to sit and look out of the window and think “oh gosh I can ponder on the universe out there and philosophise about what’s there.”

        Appolo mission was considered the greatest of achievement of mankind. The data and information brought down by these brave astronauts were even now considered as references.. Hats off to them..