An astronaut at 80

In a couple of weeks, Alan Bean will turn 80. He’s not planning any special celebration. If he does go out, it will probably be to a local restaurant in Houston, Texas. ‘I’ve eaten barbecue at this restaurant once a week, have done for 15 years,’ he tells me. ‘Nobody there has any idea that I’m anyone other than this old guy who likes barbecue.’

Few people even recognise his name. This is probably because Alan Bean was the fourth man to do something. His late colleague Pete Conrad was the third man to do the same thing — and no one used to recognise him either. The first two were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Apollo 12, sandwiched between the epic first of Apollo 11 and the famous disaster of Apollo 13, has been largely forgotten. Which is a great injustice, because of all the moonwalkers Bean and Conrad are the most interesting, the men who concentrated more on the emotional impact of their experience than the whizz-bang technicality of it all. Their story literally isn’t rocket science. For Bean, the quarter-million-mile journey to the moon turned out to be more about the Earth. Standing on a lump of rock, looking back at his fragile planet, he realised how much he valued it.

‘Since then I have not complained about the weather one single time,’ he says. ‘I’m glad there is weather. I’ve not complained about traffic — I’m glad there are people around.’ On his return, he used to visit shopping malls just to ‘watch the people go by. I’d think, boy, why do people complain about the Earth? We are living in the Garden of Eden.’

Instead of regretting the things he can’t change, Bean finds satisfaction in what gifts he does possess.