Edgar Mitchell

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Edgar Dean Mitchell
Edgar Mitchell
Astronaut
Nationality American
Born September 17, 1930 (1930-09-17) (age 77)
Hereford, Texas
Other occupation Test Pilot
Rank Captain, USN
Space time 9d 00h 01m
Selection 1966 NASA Group
Missions Apollo 14
Mission
insignia

Edgar Dean Mitchell (born September 17, 1930) is an American pilot and astronaut. As the lunar module pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours of February 9, 1971 moonwalking on the Fra Mauro formation; he was the sixth man to walk on the Moon.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Mitchell was born in Hereford, Texas.[1] He was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1952.[1] The following year he joined the US Navy where he trained as a pilot and flew off the aircraft carriers USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Ticonderoga. Later he qualified as a research pilot and taught at the navy's research pilot school. While in the Navy he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [1]

[edit] NASA experience

Mitchell was selected to be an astronaut in 1966 and was seconded from the Navy to NASA. He was backup lunar module pilot for Apollo 10 and flew (again as LM pilot) on Apollo 14. Together with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard he holds the record for the longest ever moonwalk (9 hours and 17 minutes) and travelled further on the surface than anyone else, up to that landing. [2] Apollo 14 was his only spaceflight. Ed Mitchell remained with NASA until he retired from the Navy in 1972.

Mitchell is a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, and carried one of the order's badges to the moon; it is now kept at his home chapter of Kappa Sigma at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ed Mitchell was awarded honorary doctorates from the New Mexico State University, the University of Akron, Carnegie Mellon University and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Mitchell was portrayed by Gary Cole in the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.

[edit] Other interests

Mitchell's interests include consciousness and paranormal phenomena. During the Apollo 14 flight he conducted private ESP experiments with his friends on Earth. [3] In early 1973, he founded the nonprofit Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to conduct and sponsor research into areas that mainstream science has ignored, including consciousness research and psychic events.

As well as academic papers,[4], Mitchell has written two books: Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science (ISBN 0-399-11342-8) and The Way of the Explorer (ISBN 1-57270-019-X). In The Way of the Explorer, Mitchell proposed a dyadic model of reality.[5]

He is currently the Advisory Board Chairman of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, co-founded by Dr. Carol Rosin.[6]

Mitchell has publicly expressed his opinions that he is "90 per cent sure that many of the thousands of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets"[7] and that UFOs have been the "subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so the truth doesn't come out."[8] In 2004 he told the St. Petersburg Times that a "cabal of insiders" inside the US Government were studying recovered alien bodies, and that this group had stopped briefing US Presidents after John F. Kennedy.[9] He has said, that "We all know that UFOs are real, now the question is, where they come from." [10]

Mitchell says that a teenage remote healer who lives in Vancouver and uses the pseudonym Adam Dreamhealer, helped heal him of kidney cancer at a distance. Mitchell said that while he never had a biopsy (the definitive test for cancer), "I had a sonogram and MRI that was consistent with renal carcinoma." Adam worked (distantly) on Mitchell from December of 2003 until June of 2004, when the "irregularity was gone and we haven't seen it since." [11]

Today, Edgar Mitchell is also distinguished member of INREES.

Mitchell is one of the astronauts featured in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Astronautix biography
  2. ^ NASA biography
  3. ^ Private Lunar ESP: An Interview with Edgar Mitchell.
  4. ^ Articles and essays by Edgar Mitchell
  5. ^ "Dyadic Model of Reality", IONS, by Doris Lora, December 2003
  6. ^ "ICIS Board of Directors & Advisors", Institute for Cooperation in Space
  7. ^ Edgar Mitchell On The UFO Cover-Up (1998-10-11). Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
  8. ^ Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D. - UFO Researchers & People. UFOEvidence.org. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
  9. ^ Waveney Ann Moore (2004-02-18). Astronaut: We've had visitors. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved on 2007-10-14.
  10. ^ Visitors from space, Vieraita taivaalta, TV program of Juhan af Grann from the beginning of 1990s
  11. ^ "The Big Bird, the Big Lie, God, and Science", Jill Neimark, Skeptical Inquirer, vol 30, #2, March/April 2006.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
NASA Astronaut Group 5 (The Original 19)
v • d • e
NASA Astronaut Groups


v • d • e
People who have walked on the Moon