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>We'd had a long first day, something like 20 hours. This was PDI (Powered Descent Initiation) and Landing day and the whole thing. And you have to realize that, to me, sleeping on the Moon is the greatest waste of time a human being can conceive. I mean, you go all the way to the Moon; you go a quarter of a million miles to spend three days on the Moon and you sleep through one of them. But you had to sleep; we were just so tired that first night that we didn't have any choice but sleep or, at least, try to get some rest. I can remember just laying there with my eyes closed and thinking, "Hey, I'm on the Moon. Why am I wasting my time trying to sleep or rest?" And yet you'd worked so hard that biologically you just had to get some rest. There had been some discussion of a sleep period before the first EVA, but we decided it wasn't very useful to do that. You'd have to take your suit off, and the next day you'd put it on, and you'd just waste more time. We knew this was going to be a long day, but we had prepared for it. Sure, it was exhausting to some degree because it was a long day, a 20-hour day, and physically demanding. Getting the backpacks on, getting out, getting the Rover deployed, setting out all the experiments: those were all physically very demanding tasks. So we were tired when we finally got into the rest period and I slept fairly well. I'd get some sleep, dozing off. Then I'd open my eyes for a while and then doze off for another hour. It was certainly acceptable rest.
Cernan
