Neil Armstrong, You’ve Just Walked on the Moon — What Are You Going to Do Now?

Apollo 11

A pre-Iacocca pitchman for Chrysler, NEIL ARMSTRONG is chairman of a defense electronics firm. He lives on a farm in Ohio, zealously guarding his privacy, granting no interviews on the anniversary of his one small step for a man.

BUZZ ALDRIN bravely wrote about his post-moonwalk nervous breakdown in a 1973 memoir, Return to Earth. He is head of Starcraft Enterprise, a California firm that promotes his ideas for reinvigorating the space program — some of them outlandish enough to have earned him the sobriquet “the Nutty Professor” in the halls of his ex-employers at NASA.

Apollo 12

ALAN BEAN retired from nasa in 1981 and now devotes himself full time to his passionate love of painting, mostly moonscapes. His artistic credo: “I am the only artist in all of history who has been to another world and can paint it.”

Working for McDonnell Douglas in California, CHARLES CONRAD is involved in developing a single-stage rocket that may dramatically reduce the cost of sending payloads into orbit. “This is the first thing that’s got my candle lit in 25 years,” he says.

Apollo 14

A millionaire from banking ventures even before his moonwalk, ALAN SHEPARD expanded his business activities after leaving NASA in 1974. He is president of the scholarship-bestowing Mercury Seven Foundation.

EDGAR MITCHELL said his experiences in space provoked a “blissful alteration of consciousness.” Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, California, which pursues such topics as ESP and the mind. On a more earthly plane, in 1984 he was the target of a paternity suit by a former Playboy bunny.

Apollo 15

! Along with his co-moonwalker James Irwin, DAVID SCOTT was caught in a scandal back home for carrying more than 400 stamped and canceled envelopes into space for later resale; the affair cost him his place in the astronaut corps. Today he runs a space-transportation consulting firm in California.

JAMES IRWIN “felt the power of God as I’d never felt it before” while walking on the moon. He subsequently founded an evangelical Christian organization whose activities included expeditions to Turkey to look for traces of Noah’s Ark. He died of a heart attack in 1991.

Apollo 16

CHARLES DUKE became an evangelical Christian six years after his 1972 moonwalk. Today he speaks to religious groups around the world.

The only moonwalker still working for NASA, straight-talking JOHN W. YOUNG, is a technical overseer for a range of upcoming space projects. “I think it is absolutely amazing that 25 years later, we do not have a base up there with human beings exploring that weird place.”

Apollo 17

HARRISON SCHMITT served a single term as a Republican Senator from New Mexico before suffering a narrow defeat in 1982; his opponent’s campaign slogan was, “What on Earth has he ever done?” Now based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he is an independent consultant in science, technology and public policy.

For a number of years, Eugene Cernan was a familiar face on ABC, interpreting the arcana of space flight for Peter Jennings. Today he is president of Cernan Corp., an aerospace consulting firm in Houston. “I carry the label of the last man to leave his footprints on the surface,” he says. “I never thought I would carry that label for as long as I have — and unfortunately I will probably carry it for another generation.”