They brought back a rock that originated from Earth! The oldest part of Earth we have (old as in rock forming, i.e. when it froze from lava to rock). I wonder hoe come it was laying around there for 4 billion years without eroding from micrometeorites, solar wind and the temperature swings. Perhaps it was many meters wide once upon a time. Still, micrometeorites and ejecta plumes from larger impacts should’ve burried it in dust as far as I understand how things age on the Lunar surface.

Perhaps, but with future Moon missions already being cancelled by the politicians of the time, who paid for these missions, and the science being the last important thing about going to the Moon, every experiment and every objective was important and valuable. If Shepard did not take the science seriously, then I wonder what he thought was the importance of going to the Moon. As noted by the politicians, their own goals had already been met — beating the Soviets and honoring John Kennedy.

Which is a shame because, as you can see from the map Bob provided, they came within just 65 feet of Cone Crater, their primary science objective, without realizing it. There was no GPS, of course, so they had to rely on visual identification of landmarks to guide themm. Had they had a rover, they’d surely have been able to cover enough ground to find it before their life support forced a return.

It didn’t help that Shepard tended to take all the science training lightly, which irritated the Apollo science backroom to no end. As Lee Silver put it, “The Apollo 14 crews did not have the right attitude, did not learn enough about their mission, had the burden of not having the best possible preflight photography, and they weren’t ready.” Of course, in the wake of Apollo 13, one could argue that simply getting the next mission to the Moon and back alive was success enough.

Yes. The astronauts were not allowed to travel in the rover further than they could have walked back if it had broken down.

Men were braver before. From antiquity to the enlightenment, the general (and largely false) perception was that men were degenerating and getting more lazy and less brave. Even in Roman time a senator complained that “Today people eat only because they feel hungry!” But today men have become cowards, although I think it as way less as bad as portrayed by media and government regulations. After WWII outdated US capital ships were used for gun practice on moving maneuvering targets. They could keep the superstructure and deck uncrewed thanks to remote radio control, but men had to man the engines. Since there was no ammo and minimal fuel onboard, it was considered “safe enough” to have them below deck as their ship was blasted by the biggest guns around. That’s peacetime exercise 20 years before the Moon landings. I think that beats even wartime German crews on mine breakers, merchant ships that went ahead of naval ships to seek out mines to hit in order to clear them faster than sweeping them safely. Because that was when at war and crews were expected to die one way or another in any case.