ALAN BEAN

Eventually there are going to be cities in space.

But I'm the only one who can paint the moon, because I'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not.

I think everything depends on money.

We knew it was going to be difficult to get to the moon. We didn't know how difficult.

I feel like there's too many paintings left unpainted that I just don't want to take the time away.

I can remember walking on the moon.

I have the nicest life in the world.

It's hard not to be excited when you're going to find a way to land on the moon.

One of the great things about the universe is that it's fair.

History has spurts and then is steady, and then maybe even backing up a step, and then forward again.

But I found that being an artist and doing accurate work is very difficult.

The moon is very rugged.

I found I have to stay painting.

If you remember back to some of the television we saw, Buzz and Neil on the Moon with Apollo 11. Black and white. They were bouncing around a lot. They were really bouncing on their tip toes. Quite fun to do.

At one-sixth gravity in that suit, you have to move in a different way.

Just like some day, say, 1000 years from now, when we can go to another star and see a planet, that's what we would do because we will know how to cure cancer, cure birth defects, so we would teach them.

I had the good fortune and the gift to be one of the 12 men to walk on the moon.

I would say I had zero philosophical thoughts at that time. I was operating on a timed checklist that we've been trained to do, to try to maximize every really minute on the moon.

I feel blessed every day when I'm working on these paintings... the first artist to ever go to another world and try to tell stories that people care about.

It was hard for me to believe. I would look down and say, 'This is the moon, this is the moon,' and I would look up and say, 'That's the Earth, that's the Earth,' in my head. So, it was science fiction to us even as we were doing it.

I was more of a person that liked flying and operating high-performance machinery, and I liked that, the skill it took, the intelligence it took to do that.

As I ran along, I remember... saying to myself, 'You know, this is really the moon. We're really here... That's the Earth up there.' And I said it two or three times to myself.

I do not believe that anyone from outer space has ever visited the Earth.

I believe that 100, 200, 300 years from now, all these paintings will be around because they're the first paintings of humans doing things off this Earth.

We're going through all the checklist, getting in position to make the entry and all that... And I think either Pete, Dick, or I said, 'Well, I wonder how those parachutes are doing?' And then someone else said... 'Well, we'll find out in about 55 minutes!'