[Apollo 14]

From the Personal Collection of Apollo 14 CMP Stuart Roosa.

TWO APOLLO ERA FLIGHT SUITS AND JACKET RELATING TO THE APOLLO 14 MISSION AND PANAMA JUNGLE SURVIVAL TRAINING

While NASA missions were planned to end with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean rather than on land, Apollo astronauts were trained on how to survive and navigate jungle terrain in case they landed off-course on their return from space. The present lot includes materials astronauts trained with as well as photographs of this Panama jungle survival school taken in June 1967. The astronauts spent three days in Panama learning how to survive in the jungle, divided into three-man crews and only provided with the materials included in the onboard survival kit.

Apollo 14 Command Module Pilot Stuart "Stu" Roosa was no stranger to wilderness survival due to his training as a smokejumper in the United States Forest Service. Smokejumpers are firefighters trained to jump from airplanes to extinguish isolated forest fires. Roosa jumped in crews putting out fires in Oregon and California in the summer of 1953. This experience proved to be an asset to Roosa in his illustrious career as a pilot and later as an Apollo astronaut. 

Roosa would have worn the gold suit and jacket in his flights training for the Apollo 14 mission and when training as backup CMP for Apollo 16 and 17. He would have been in line to command Apollo 20 if the program hadn’t prematurely ended. 

This lot is accompanied by several photographs that offer a unique look at astronaut training, both in jungle survival and in testing the launch abort astronaut evacuation system.