The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fourth person walk on the moon dies at 86
Alan Bean, who became the fourth man to walk on the
moon and turned to painting years later to tell the story of NASA’s Apollo missions as
they began receding into history, died Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86.
His death was announced by his family in a statement released by NASA.
Bean stepped onto the lunar surface preceded by Pete Conrad, the mission commander of their Apollo 12 flight, in November 1969, four months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first lunar explorers.
The flight of Apollo 12, while thrilling in its own right, was not nearly as dramatic as the pioneering mission of Apollo 11, but it resulted in a more extensive exploration of the moon.
Bean returned to space in July 1973, when he com
manded a three-man flight to the orbiting space research station Skylab, the forerun- ner of the International Space Station. The astronauts on that mission spent 59 days in space, a record at the time.
Twelve astronauts ultimately walked on the moon in six Apollo missions. When Bean, a former Navy test pilot, left NASA in 1981, he drew on a long-stand- ing interest in painting to become a full-time artist, creating images of the era when science fiction mor- phed into reality. Many of Bean’s fellow
astronauts were evidently taken aback by his choos-
ing the art world over private business. “I’d say 60
percent of them thought maybe I was having a midlife crisis,” Bean recalled in his book “Apollo” (1998), written with Andrew Chaikin, in which he reproduced many of his paintings.
“Every artist has the earth or their imaginations to inspire their paintings,” Bean told The New York
Times in 1994. “I’ve got the earth and my imagination, and I’m the first to have the moon, too.”
Bean’s paintings drew on his recollections, inter- views with fellow astronauts, photos and videos. They included a re-creation of Armstrong securing an American flag in the lunar dust; Bean standing along- side Conrad on the moon, looking toward earth; Eugene A. Cernan riding in a lunar rover during the Apollo 17 mission and the earth ris
ing above the moon. Working from his home in Houston, Bean strove for accuracy in presenting the astronauts’ gear and the prevailing light, but his paint
ings often conveyed a sense of what it was like to work on the moon rather than replicating an exact moment. He employed color liberally in place of the black, gray and white of the lunar terrain and the skies.
About 45 of Bean’s paintings were displayed at the Smith
sonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington in an exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the first moon walk. Bean sold his paint- ings on his website and had fetched as much as $175,000 for a single painting by then, although he had received limited attention from critics, The Times reported.
“There is an evident sincer- ity, diligence and restraint, coupled with a momentous subject that the artist clearly knows intimately, but he does not exploit or sensationalize,” Roberta Smith wrote in The Times in June 2009, in a review of the paintings on Bean’s website.
“But except for a painting of the earth viewed from the moon, the website’s offerings are all the same,” she added. “This indicates yet another artist working from a formula, which can make his efforts seem commercial
and risk-averse.”
Alan LaVern Bean was born on March 15, 1932, in Wheeler, Texas, but grew up in Fort Worth. He was fascinated by model planes as a youngster and received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955 from the University of Texas.
He obtained a commission in Navy aviation and after completing test-pilot school was selected by NASA as one of 14 new astronauts in October 1963. But it wasn’t until Apollo 12 that he flew in space.
Seconds after the capsule’s liftoff, a lightning strike knocked out its electrical equipment, but its power was quickly restored. Bean
and Conrad made a pinpoint landing on terrain called the Ocean of Storms, having descended in their lunar module from the capsule being flown in orbit by a third astronaut, Richard Gordon.
They spent about 7 hours and 45 minutes completing two moonwalks in which they deployed instruments to study the moon’s geology, installed a nuclear generator to power future experimental equipment and collected an extensive assortment of moon rocks.
They also reached Surveyor 3, an unmanned lunar probe that had flown to the
moon 31 months earlier, and cut away pieces of it so NASA could examine the moon’s
impact on its materials. The three astronauts, all holding the rank of Navy commander, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean only 3 miles from the aircraft carrier Hornet. All were promoted by President Rich- ard M. Nixon to the rank of captain.
Conrad died in a motorcycle accident in 1999; Gordon died in 2017.
Bean later commanded the second of three flights to the Skylab orbiting laboratory, working with Jack R. Lousma of the Marine Corps and Owen K. Garriott, a scientist-astronaut, on a mission that studied the earth’s makeup and the sun’s atmosphere.
He retired from the Navy in 1975 but remained with NASA for another six years, overseeing the training of future astronauts.
He is survived by his sec
ond wife, Leslie, and by a son, Clay, and a daughter, Amy Sue, from his marriage to his first wife, Sue.
Bean developed his interest in painting while taking art courses early in his Navy career. He used plywood cov- ered by slowly hardening acrylic paste and pounded on that surface with a hammer he had employed on the moon, a way to have his paintings simulate its rugged terrain. The paintings sometimes included footprints from a molding of the boots he wore on the moon along with pieces of his spacesuit patches and a sprinkling of their moondust residue.
“You know, people romanticize the moon,” Bean wrote in his book. “But I’ve been there and I can tell you it’s mostly black dirt. But I want it to be the most beautiful black dirt that’s ever been painted in the history of art.”
“I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints,” he added, “but as an artist who was once an astronaut.”