Star Telegram | 01/18/2004 | Exploration: the sea and the moon above it: "Posted on Sun, Jan. 18, 2004

Exploration: the sea and the moon above it
In the valley of Taurus-Littrow
By Harrison H. Schmitt
Special to the Star-Telegram"

President Bush's plan to propose a permanent return to the moon cannot help but stir memories in an Apollo moonwalker -- and raise new hopes for potential exploration.

As the last of 12 men to step on the moon, and the only scientist to do so, my recollections are as clear today as 31 years ago.

It was December 1972. President Nixon had just been re-elected; the war in Vietnam was in its final years.

We landed in a spectacular valley known as Taurus-Littrow, on the southeastern edge of the Sea of Serenity. Apollo 17 was to be the last of the manned American moon missions for at least three decades, but we didn't know it then.

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