Trivia

Apollo 10 holds the world / Moon record for the highest speed attained by any manned vehicle at 24,791 mph (39,897 km/h) during its return from the Moon on May 26, 1969.

In the film, Cernan kids his old navy buddy about planning on making it to the age of 83 and then reevaluating. Cernan made it to the age of 82, passing away in January of 2017.

The loss of Charles Bassett and Elliot See in February, 1966 occurred when they were landing at the facility where the Gemini 9 capsule was finishing completion. Coming in at too low an altitude in heavy fog, See clipped the edge of the hangar-like building containing the capsule. Evidence showed that in the split second after impact Basset's canopy section was blown away as the first step in manual ejection but the aircraft hit the ground before this could be completed. Later, Buzz Aldrin, who had and ego not unlike that of Cernan but also a tendency to speak his mind, shared the opinion that Eliot See was not a particularly assertive pilot, which he contended was the reason for the unusually low glide path when approaching the runway.

Congress cut the funding for the Apollo program after the construction of the Apollo 18 rocket and other components had been completed. This saved a great deal of money that would have been required to carry out the mission, although the cost of the write-off was considerable. The complete Apollo 18 spacecraft, sans the LEM but including the various stages of the Saturn V system, is now on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, arranged on the ground horizontally for public viewing. Over the intervening decades it had undergone a great deal of weathering and decomposition. Considered part of the collection of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, it is undergoing a $1.25 million restoration project. The lunar module "LM13", which was nearing completion at the time of the cancellation, is on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in New York.

Cernan is technically correct in saying that he was the last person to leave a footprint on the moon, but he was not the last man of the Apollo program to first step onto the lunar surface. That would be his fellow crew member, Harrison Schmitt. After the landing, Cernan exited the LEM, followed by Schnitt - the last man to make a first footprint.