After the near-disaster of Apollo 13, NASA's Apollo 14 mission carried Alan Shepard, America's first man in space back in 1961, on a journey to the lunar highlands of Fra Mauro. Shepard, grounded for years by an inner-ear disorder before surgery restored his flight status, became the oldest astronaut to walk on the Moon and famously hit golf balls across the lunar surface with a makeshift six-iron.
Shepard's road to the Moon was longer and stranger than any other astronaut's. Diagnosed with Ménière's disease, a debilitating inner-ear condition, he was grounded from flight status for years and shunted into management as chief of the Astronaut Office, watching colleagues fly missions he might once have commanded. Experimental surgery in 1968 fixed the problem well enough for him to be recertified, and he lobbied hard to command Apollo 14 at age 47.
The mission followed Apollo 13's oxygen tank explosion, and NASA delayed the launch by two months to investigate spacecraft modifications, making Apollo 14's success crucial to the program's credibility. Shepard and Edgar Mitchell landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, the site originally intended for Apollo 13, and conducted two moonwalks collecting nearly 43 kilograms of lunar samples.
Before reboarding the lunar module, Shepard smuggled out a modified six-iron head attached to a sample-collection tool and, with one gloved hand in the bulky spacesuit, swung at two golf balls. The first he shanked; the second, he claimed, sailed for 'miles and miles' in the low lunar gravity, though it likely traveled only a few hundred yards. The stunt became one of the Space Race's most delightfully human moments.