Does NASA need to name its space shuttles after cartoon characters to get some attention these days?
So thinks the last man who walked on the moon, Gene Cernan. And he may be on to something — it has been an astonishing 40 years since anyone has made the 240,000-mile trip.
“No one remembers it was Apollo 10 that went, but everyone still calls it ‘Snoopy’ and ‘Charlie Brown,’ ” Cernan recounted to Nick Clooney at the Newseum on Monday. (He and his Apollo crew renamed their command and lunar modules after the beloved Charles Schulz characters.)
“It gave it an identity and a loyalty,” he explained.
He recounted that from the simple act of giving the spacecrafts nicknames in 1969, Schulz — a vocal supporter of NASA — created several comic strips about the most famous beagle astronaut and NASA created the “NASA Silver Snoopy Award” for excellence.
The tradition of Snoopy and NASA still lives on today in more than just memories from decades past. The Charles Schulz Museum in California has a special online and museum exhibit in honor of Cernan’s 40-year anniversary.
