Harrison Schmitt; Apollo 17 Lunar Module Pilot
Posted on February 27, 2008
Lifestyle, PhotographyI headed over to ihmc; the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, where Harrison Schmitt was speaking. I got the opportunity to shoot his portrait. Typical of most celebrities, he was busy and had very little time to let me shoot him, but still very approachable. I ran into him as he was speaking to the last person getting a book signed. I snuck into a side library and listened in on the conversation as I acted like I was deeply immersed in “The Methodology of the Mind” (I happened to flip to the page that suggested that as there are left and right brain people, there are also front and back brain people. I laughed at the idea then started eves dropping). The discussion was about the involvement of robotics in complex procedures in extreme conditions. The gentleman speaking with Harrison suggested that some people believe that the most complex procedures cannot be done by robotics without some sort of constant human management. I guess the idea was, some think you can’t stack hundreds of tasks all relying on the task before it being done properly to complete the next without a human grading a pass or fail on each procedure. I thought for sure Harrison; being the Apollo Pilot, would lean on the side of human involvement in every robotic task. Not the case. In his words, “those who think that are arrogant. It is arrogant to think that something cannot be done correctly without your involvement.” Interesting… I thought. A few minutes later I grabbed him and shot these photos. Good guy…
Here’s some old footage from the last time we were on the rock.
