And Then There Was Four

Of the very special and exclusive club of the 12 men who have walked on the Moon, the death of Alan Bean brings the number remaining down to four.
The fourth man to walk on a land other than Earth, Bean was an astronaut on Apollo 12, the second lunar landing in November 1969. 
It is a sad fact that nobody has trodden on the Moon since 1972 and of the remaining four astronauts, the youngest is 82 so we could very soon have nobody alive who has walked on anything other than our own planet.  
After hanging up his Spacesuit, Bean became an artist specialising in Space art and using a speck of moon dust in all pictures, taken from his space suit.
'Im the only artist who can paint the moon' he said, 'because i'm the only one who knows whether that's right or not'.
With the focus now seemingly shifting to manned missions to Mars, we may not be adding to the 12 sets of footprints on our closest neighbour in space anytime soon and that not only seems such a waste of a practise site but a magnificent case of running before we can walk.

Buzz Aldrin 88
David Scott 85
Charles Duke 82
Harrison Schmitt 82

Alan Bean - Died 2018
John Young - Died 2018
Eugene Cernan - Died 2017
Edgar Mitchell  - Died 2016
Neil Armstrong - Died 2012
Pete Conrad - Died 1999
Alan Shepard - Died 1998
James Irwin - Died 1991