[Which Apollo astronaut] visited my school?

This may well be unanswerable, but I thought I’d open a question that’s been bugging me for years to the Dope Detectives.

When I was between the ages of 8 and 11 years old, which would be '91 to '94, an American guy visited my primary school, in England, who had ‘been to the moon’. I’m unsure if he had actually visited the surface, or merely orbited. He apparently had brought some footage taken on the mission he had been on, which may have clarified the situation, but my school didn’t actually have a projector, so he couldn’t show them. I do remember him being clearly somewhat bewildered at how tiny the school was, only 28 pupils total, and only the older half in the class he was talking to. We wound up with a talk that clearly wasn’t the one he was planning on, and a few rocks were handed round for us to look at- one moon rock that I think he said was collected on their mission, and one that was harvested from a meteorite and thought to originally be from Mars, which was encased in plastic. Why I can remember that, but not who the guy was, I have no clue.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the only astronauts I’d heard of at the time, and he wasn’t either of them. I think he had dark hair, maybe some grey, but he wasn’t elderly. Aside from that, I got nothin’.

None of the kids were massive space buffs, and frankly the fact that he was American made about as big an impact as the whole space thing. I remember thinking it was kinda cool, but I didn’t realise that it was actually a pretty big deal. I don’t think I even mentioned it to my parents that afternoon when they picked me up.

It does sound perfectly feasible that an ex NASA astronaut would do a tour of UK schools, presumably sponsored by someone hoping to drum up youth interest in space. Maybe the schools were decided by lottery, which could explain why he’d wind up in such a tiny place (he wasn’t just there to case the joint, unlike the only other random visitor I remember there, who nicked the teacher’s wallet).

The teacher who was there that day, who was the head and presumably arranged the whole thing, sadly died about 10 years ago, so I can’t use that line of enquiry.

Anyone got any guesses?

Here’s the wiki for Apollo astronauts, and a link toimages of them.

Maybe you can narrow down the choices based the images to get started if you don’t recognize any names.

Thread title edited to better indicate subject.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

I’ve looked at lists of the options, but it was over 20 years ago, and he just looked like some grown-up to me at the time. Plus, of course, the pictures are mainly taken at the time they were astronauts, long before the '90s. None of the names ring any kind of bells, or if they do, it’s from other things, like reading an article much later. I’ve always been terrible at remembering names, so that’s not a surprise.

I’m mostly hoping someone else saw the guy as well, as it seems likely that it was a part of a big speaking tour. There can’t have been many US astronauts in the UK during that period.

  1. As of 2017, only Americans have visited the moon (or left low Earth Orbit), so “the American guy” is superflous when describing people who have been to the moon.

  2. Of the 24 men who have flown to the moon, two were dead by 1991 (Swigert and Evans) and James Irwin would die in 1991.

  3. I would have almost expected it to be David Scott, Apollo 9 and 15 fame since his was a major science mission (the first one infact) and he is or was active on the lecture circuit, But he was blond.\

  4. Which leaves dark haired Harrison Schmitt, only geologist to walk on the moon as a possible candidate. John Young is another option, but he was an active NASA astronaut then.

You said the head of the school passed away. Is there anyone else still at the school who was around then? How about in town government or the local library? This might be something someone older might remember. Or if the library has archives of the local paper and you have some time, you could go through back issues looking for mention of this. (That might not be as difficult as it sounds, especially if the paper was a weekly. Something like this probably made it to the front page, so you could just go through the front pages of back issues.)

I very much doubt it; the village is tiny, no library, and the school couldn’t have made less of a deal of it if it’d tried. There were no other adults present except the teacher. The closest local paper is based 10 miles away, and never visited the school once in the time I was there.

The head didn’t even mention the visit until that day, and I don’t recall her ever bringing it up again. We came in, and she announced that we had a visitor at the start of class. Every other time that happened, it was someone like a policeman talking about ‘stranger danger’, or someone from the local wildlife trust or something. This time, it was someone who’d been to the moon.

The guy appeared a little confused by the scale of the place and the reception as well; that’s probably why I didn’t think it was a big thing at the time. I mean, the younger kids, age 4-7, just had class as normal, and the head treated him exactly the same as any other visitor. No fanfare, she didn’t seem especially excited, or appear to expect us to be.

Thanks AK84, that does narrow it down a lot! I’m not 100% sure about the dark hair, I am confident that his hair wasn’t white, but I’m pretty vague on precise shade. The only real concrete visual image I have is of the rock encased in plastic, because I did think that was cool. I just googled him, and I think he would be dark enough to not register as blond to 8-11 year old me, and David Scott does look more ‘right’ than Harrison Schmitt. He also has a less memorable name, which ups the odds to me, because I’d never met anyone called Harrison, so there’d be a much higher chance of me recalling that than another David.

Oh, and I am aware only Americans have left orbit, but he was pretty much the first American I ever met, so that was a bit of a focus of the memory :slight_smile: I noticed his voice a lot more than his appearance, as he didn’t look much different to other people I’d met, but he did sound different.

It sounds like maybe the head had a personal connection of some sort to the astronaut, and invited him over when he was in England on a visit for some other reason.

Another possible line of inquiry is the rocks. Both moon rocks and Martian meteorites are fairly rare and fairly closely-tracked, and I don’t think that every astronaut ended up with some. It might be possible to find out who had some, or who borrowed some for an educational trip.

Probably not helpful to identification, but were the samples passed around something like this? (Not sure how long that design has been in use.)

He may have done other reporter-worthy things while he was in the neighbourhood.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you?

Also, only lunar and Martian meteorites found by scientists in Antarctica are closely curated. Ones found by civilians are on the private market and can be bought by anyone. One Martian meteorite was found in Los Angeles, for example, and I have a small sample of that one gifted to me by the finder himself.

I’m pretty sure he arrived at the school, talked to us, then left the village. My impression was that he was doing a tour of lots of schools. In fact, I’m pretty sure he said something about our school being the smallest he’d seen on the trip.

I’m certain he had no personal connection to the head, she was someone who talked about her life and her friends a lot. There was no indication of them knowing each other when they were talking, unlike when she did have people she knew round to talk to us. Plus he wouldn’t have been caught out with the size of place and lack of projector if he’d known her.

Oh, and the rock sample was in a flat circle of plastic, but it was just the one bit of rock. Maybe 2-3" across, but my hands were smaller then. The other sample was just rock, no plastic.

Once you narrow down the list to a couple of astronauts, you might ask NASA - if the astronaut were on an official trip, they could tell you who was in the UK during the time in question.

I’m 99.99% sure you misunderstood about the supposed moon rock. As explained here, the U.S. government doesn’t allow private citizens, even the astronauts themselves, to own moon rocks. The only exceptions appear to be tiny grains of dust, not large samples, such as described in the OP.

Real moon rocks are incredibly valuable, and are therefore very closely monitored and tracked, despite the issues with the missing gift samples linked to above. It beggars belief that a real, unprotected moon rock would be casually handed around to a classful of elementary school students. It’s about as likely that you and your classmates handled the Hope Diamond as a real moon rock, IMHO.

My guess is that your visitor was the geologist Schmitt, and that he showed you an Earth rock similar to the kind he found on the moon.

What is the closest thing to a moon rock per se on the Earth? Or in the Earth (meaning, basically ungettable to by any wannabe traveling lunar astronaut)?

The lunar maria are made up mostly of basalts, but of somewhat different typical composition to those found on Earth.

The white parts of the moon are this.

Um, you can’t legally own them, but they do loan them out. There’s a link to the NASA lunar rock sample request page for schools just a few replies above your post. I’ve just been looking round it.

There’s even a UK organisation which does the same thing, with samples on long-term loan to the UK.

In the OP you said one sample was encased in lucite but the other - - the alleged moon rock - - was not. I’m asserting that the unencased rock is highly unlikely to have been a real lunar sample.

That would make sense. One real moon rock, one that was similar that you could touch to get an idea.