Colonel James B. Irwin: Biography and Exclusive Interview with the Late Astronaut

From the Moon to Serving God: An Even Higher Flight

As a young boy, James Irwin often pointed to the moon and told anyone who would listen that someday he would travel there. It's doubtful anyone believed him, because space travel was still found only in science fiction tales, and it would be many years before the first astronaut would even orbit the earth in space—yet alone fly to the moon. Years later, at the age of 41, Irwin, as a member of Apollo 15, July 26—August 7, 1971, lived to see his childhood dream become a reality. He and Dave Scott spent many hours on the lunar surface, while Al Worden orbited above in the command module.

Someone might think that a man who was an astronaut, who traveled to the moon, might for the rest of his life find anything else to be dull, boring, or mundane—but that was not the case for the late Colonel James B. Irwin, who died August 8, 1991, after a heart attack, at the age of 61 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Irwin, who was born March 17, 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, told this author a few years ago in an interview never before published that after his trip to the moon he believed his most important mission in life was serving God and sharing his faith in Jesus Christ.

Colonel James Irwin and Scott became the first people to use a motor vehicle on the moon, the Rover, an $8 million dune buggy that weighed only 76 pounds when used (455 on earth), traveled at a maximum of 10 miles-per-hour, and could carry 2 ½ times its weight. They also discovered the Genesis Rock, an important archeological discovery that helped scientists estimate the age of the moon. Irwin also became the first person to quote from the Bible while on the moon, Psalm 121:1: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

"The earth was very small," Irwin recalled the view from the moon. "(It was) the size of a marble. I thought it the earth is that small, how small am I? Just a speck in the universe, but yet significant enough that God would love me and create me and love me enough to touch my life….I felt privileged like an angel to get God's view of the earth."