One Giant Leap for Mankind: Vintage Photographs from the Victor Martin-Malburet Collection 
28 October 2022
One Giant Leap for Mankind: Vintage Photographs from the Victor Martin-Malburet Collection 
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The dramatic night launch of the last human voyage the Moon, NASA [Apollo 17], 7 December 1972

printed 1972
vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based Kodak paper 10 h × 8 w in (25 × 20 cm)
estimate: $1,200–1,800
result: $1,690
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The dramatic last launch of humans to another world. It was the only night launch of the Apollo program. An estimated 750,000 spectators were on hand as the Saturn V rocket lit up the night sky at the Kennedy Space Center shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972.
Numbered to upper margin 'NASA S-72-55070' with 'A Kodak Paper' watermarks to verso.

note: Media visuals referencing the original NASA photograph(s) not included.
literature: LIFE, 29 December 1972, ppg. 6-7 illustrates variation Time, 18 December 1972, pg. 26 illustrates variation Space: A History of Space Exploration in Photographs, Chaikin, pg. 130 Apollo: Through the Eyes of the Astronauts, Jacobs, ppg. 6-7

print
LIFE, 29 December 1972, ppg. 6-7 illustrates variation


This photograph shows the dramatic last launch of humans to another world.

It was the only night launch of the Apollo program. An estimated 750,000 spectators were on hand as the Saturn V rocket lit up the night sky at the Kennedy Space Center shortly after midnight on December 7, 1972.

The huge, 363-feet tall Apollo 17 (Spacecraft 114/Lunar Module 12/Saturn 512) space vehicle is launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, at 12:33 a.m. (EST), Dec. 7, 1972. Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission in NASA’s Apollo program, was the first nighttime liftoff of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft were astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans; and Harrison Schmitt. Flame from the five F-1 engines of the Apollo/Saturn first (S-1C) stage illuminates the nighttime scene. A two-hour and 40-minute hold delayed the Apollo 17 launching.
[NASA caption]

“Apollo 20 was taken off the schedule five months after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had ‘won’ the Moon race. Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled soon afterward, as budget cuts, and changing political priorities, impacted NASA. When Schmitt, Cernan and Evans prepared for a dramatic nighttime launch on December 7, 1972, they knew that it would be a good few years before anyone followed them to the Moon, but they never imagined that another half a century would pass, and still no one would have built upon their achievements.”

—Space historian Piers Bizony (Bizony, pg. 169)

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