Many space enthusiasts know that one of the U.S. Forest Service’s
most famous former employees was astronaut Stuart Roosa. The smokejumper circled
the moon as part of NASA’s Apollo 14 mission more than 40 years ago. However,
what most folks don’t know is that Roosa brought a group of tiny travelers
along for the ride. After all these years, they’re still among us today, living
quietly across the United States. Their names – Douglas fir, sequoia and
loblolly pine – are familiar to most everyone because they were seeds from
these and other well-known tree species. But just call them by their cool
1970s-sounding name: Moon Trees To get them into space, Roosa carried
a metal canister about the size of a soda can in his personal kit filled with
more than 500 seeds from loblolly pine, redwood, sweet gum, sycamore and
Douglas fir trees. He did it in part to honor the Forest Service, where, as a
smokejumper, he was a first responder to forest fires. As the command module
pilot on the Apollo 14 mission, Roosa was contacted by Ed Cliff, then Chief of the Forest Service. Cliff
proposed the idea of taking the seeds along as an experiment, but more so as a
publicity stunt, to see how they would grow back on Earth after being exposed
to the harsh realities of space travel, including zero gravity and radiation…more
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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