The first and obvious conclusion that you have to think about is the question that perhaps the surface of the Mare at one time was that much higher. It was rather frightening to me that no matter where I looked in his region-and it's a very long, large region bounded by many hundreds of kilometers on the side-I don't know the full extent of it but, if you'll look at that and look at the height this represents, we're obviously talking about large quantities of materials that have been moving on the moon.

The question that comes up next is: Did this go away by any relation? Was it fluid in the seismic backing of the interior of the moon, or was there some other mechanism involved?

This is our first evidence of an actual movement of large masses of material, and to be able to trace its origin and its record in the walls and other features.

In the next viewgraph (fig. 15), another piece of serendipity, appears just on the back side of the moon, just prior to coming around at a point where we established contact with the earth. This is the one

that I find most satisfying. I happened to be looking out to the north of the ground track and saw this blob, or black piece here, which I thought was a shadow. I took a look at it and, instead of finding a shadow, what we found was a large crater.

This crater is probably some 75 kilometers in diameter. Inside of it there's a small crater, and then running out of it we found one string of black material and two strings of a dark brown material. Now, this we saw in one of the earlier rims. It became a subject for study and subsequent passes over this area.

It turns out that with eyeball instead of binoculars we were able to see a great deal more than with a set of binoculars. It shows up in this photograph (fig. 15). This is a little bit too far off in our ground track to allow good coverage with our high resolution hand camera. So that remains for the human observer to record when he sees and documents the specimens as well as possible.

These are a lot of things that do not show in this slide. Even in the enlargements, we find that the eye was able to resolve features that were not able to be recorded.

We can see structure in the walls of the crater that sloped around this sloping hole, and it appears there may be something intrusive underneath there. There's evidence of shock that go around in the patterns of the wall.

To my knowledge, this is the only place on the lunar surface where we can see evidence that material has definitely flown from one place to another, and that we can see the origin. This is unique.

Even, as in lunar geology it's frequently that we can run across lava flows of one type or another, but it's very seldom that you can find evidence of shock. I think it's indeed fortunate that we were able to see this as part of our mission.

The next slide (fig. 16) is a slide that was taken post-TEI, on our way home. It shows the crater that we consider to be one of the most exciting and interesting features on the far side of the moon. It's a crater known as King. It has a unique lobster shaped central feature, and around it, the more we study it, the more we find that this looks like a lava pool. I emphasize that's what it appears to be.

The floor has, as you can see, evidence of motion. You can find dark materials which seem to be the outcrop that stick to the surface, and light materials. Some of this light material runs way out to the north and it may, in fact, be what was reported earlier by the Soviets as the Soviet Mountains. There has been no evidence that can support the size of the Soviet Mountains or their extent. However, it appears that part of the structure may run up to the north and may indeed be a mountain range.

We carried our laser altimeter, which took measurements across this area, and the first shot shows that there may indeed be some dropoff.

THE LUNAR ROVER IN MOTION

Colonel DUKE. We have a short film clip of what we call an experiment, or a design test ejecta for the flybacks to photograph the Rover in motion. I just mounted the Rover, took the 16-millimeter camera, and photographed John over about 2 minutes of an optical course, which was nothing but the lunar surface, and for about 2 minutes of this, we call it the Grand Prix, and this is what we would like to show you and also give you a view of how it is from riding across the lunar surface from our vantage point on the Rover in this short film clip. There goes Barney Oldfield, the future president of the Dune Buggy Club of America.

We're about 10 kilometers an hour here over some of the roughest terrain that we traversed in the whole stay on the lunar surface.

Captain YOUNG. I think what it's important to point out here is that the vehicle looks like it's bouncing up and down, but that terrain that we landed on is extremely rough, all of it downhill, lots of slots, lots of craters, and that vehicle just went up and down and right over them just as if they didn't exist.

What that vehicle allows us to do was to expand our traverse. We covered about 6 miles north and south, if you take the total distance north and south, of where the lunar module landed. We could never have done that on foot. It would have been physically impossible. And it carried all our tools, and all our rocks, and everything that we needed.

Colonel DUKE. This vehicle has completely revolutionized lunar exploration. I think that the investment return in this was outstanding, from our point of view, because it gave us great mobility, and as John said, it allowed us to return a lot more rocks from a lot more different places.

Captain YOUNG. This next is a shot from on board. As you can see, it's a ray from the South Ray Crater, and you can see the extent of it. We're right now about 3 miles away from the South Ray Crater, and these rocks are scattered all up and down. In addition to the rocks, there are numerous secondaries and it makes going very rough, because sometimes your best option is to avoid a big secondary and go into a smaller secondary.

Colonel DUKE. The terrain to the south, as you can tell, is extremely rough. To the north it's much smoother than this, and we had quite a nice ride.

The rain that you see coming down into the photograph occasionally is the lunar dust that is spilling on top of us, due to the fact that we had a fender fall off on the left rear. We didn't think much about it at the time, but it really did spray us with dust.

Captain YOUNG. This photograph shows a little later the EVA 3. The other was shot at EVA 2, and it shows us leaving the rim of North Ray Crater.

North Ray Crater is as big as the Meteor Crater in Arizona, fully half a mile across and that rim is probably about 20° steep. Although the rim is very steep, the block field is not nearly as bad, and right in here is where we were able to, by going downhill, pick up the maximum velocity, which was a roaring 11 miles an hour. Now, that

doesn't sound like very much, but in a lunar rover buggy in one-sixth gravity, when you try to turn the wheels you just keep going in a straight line.

Colonel DUKE. We certainly had our seat belts on during the whole time too. It's like riding in a car that's on ice, or on a slippery street. (Film clip completed.)

Captain YOUNG. This next slide repeats what Rene Descartes, the famous French mathematician and philosopher said in 1637, and I think it typifies the scientific results that we were able to bring back from our mission.

"There is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach or so hidden that we cannot discover it."

As we've said, we've just been able to take a preliminary look. We haven't really started to dig into it, but some of the results are going to be so scientifically spectacular and rewarding that I can imagine that some of the things that we found, from the cameras, the telescopes that we carried for all the scientific data, the rocks that we brought back, the data that we got from the satellites that are still up there I think it's going to revolutionize our concept of the solar system, of the moon, and quite likely of the earth.

I don't think anybody's going to the moon to find out the origin and the evolution of the moon. We're going to the moon to relate the origin and evolution of the moon to our earth, to our mineral resources here on earth, and one of these days we'll be smart enough to do just that.

I think humanity is selfish enough to realize that what we're doing on the moon is going to benefit us here on earth, or we wouldn't be be doing it.

Thank you very much. [Applause.]

Mr. TEAGUE. Are there any questions by members of the committee? Mr. Davis?

Mr. JOHN DAVIS. No questions.

Mr. TEAGUE. Mr. Mosher?

Mr. MOSHER. Mr. Chairman, I apologize for arriving late. I was over in the Oceanography Subcommittee, down in the depths of the ocean instead of up on the moon, where there also are resources that we are searching for.

I won't ask any questions, but I do want to join the rest in enthusiastically congratulating you gentlemen upon the success of the Apollo 16 venture and upon your safe return.

There were some difficult moments, I know, moments of suspense for all of us and I particularly remember, and maybe you've already mentioned this, Mr. Chairman, but I particularly remember a coincidence that one of your moments of great suspense, when you weren't sure whether the mission could continue, came as the House was approving by an overwhelming vote the authorization bill. I'm glad that we were able to give you that encouragement while you were out there exploring for us.

Mr. JOHN DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, if I may offer one comment.

I would just like to say that I'm deeply impressed by what I think will be discovered, will be found out, in your trip. I was there to see you off, and it's awfully good to see you back.