From DAVID BAKER
In ‘Tales the spacemen tell’, Andrew Chaikin claims 23 of the 24 lunar-bound
astronauts survive and that only one (Jack Swigert) has died. In fact, Ronald
E. Evans died on 6 April 1990 and James B. Irwin died on 8 August 1991,
leaving only 21.
Evans was the command module pilot on Apollo 17, and remained in orbit
around the Moon while Cernan and Schmitt explored the Taurus-Littrow landing
site. Irwin was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 15 who, with David R.
Scott, explored the Hadley-Apennine valley. Each man subsequently succumbed
to a heart attack.
It is interesting to observe that early Moon explorers had dangerously
imbalanced electrolyte levels due to dehydration and Irwin had a mild heart
attack during his mission. The medical casebooks provide fascinating and
alarming evidence of just how close we came to losing a man under these
circumstances.
David Baker Cambridge
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