August 10, 1982. A day that will live in mankind memory forever. The day we walked on Mars... and never returned.
In his memoir Cernan jokingly said he hammered astronaut boss Deke Slayton with a simple argument: being the last on the Moon, I would like to be the first on Mars.
OOC-1 : that was the exact date specified by Werner von Braun at a top-brass NASA briefing on August, 4, 1969, three weeks after the Moon landing. At the cost of a total "war budget" all-out effort.
OOC-2: ITTL I would be the most frustrated space cadet in existence - having missed the Moon landings by 13 to 10 years; being a toddler in August 1982 (I've born May 1982).