Aldrin — the second man to step foot on the moon — will be one of 11 contestants who pair up with professional dancers to compete in the series’ weekly dance-offs. The former astronaut says he was never a big dancer, so has a lot of catching up to do.

“I’m not known for that agility,” Aldrin told SPACE.com. “I’m one of those people who need continued exposure. Whether it’s flying a spacecraft or trying something out on the dance floor, it takes a while to really get comfortable with it.”

Aldrin has already started learning his dance for the premiere episode to air March 22 — the cha-cha. And he is working on the next week’s dance, the foxtrot, with his dance partner Ashly DelGrosso-Costa.

“She’s a dream,” he said. Costa is even planning to accompany Aldrin on a trip to New Zealand this week for a space conference, so the two can fit in some dance practice on the road.

Though he’ll be up against some stiff competition, including U.S. Olympic figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek, Aldrin says he plans to play hard.

“I wouldn’t have gotten into the space program if I wasn’t competitive,” he said.

But the space pioneer’s primary motivation for joining the show is to help bring NASA and the U.S. human spaceflight program to the front of popular consciousness.

“Until there’s a spectacular success or failure, the space program is not on everyone’s lips,” Aldrin said. “Dancing with the Stars” has “a very large audience of millions of followers and I felt that it would really be nice if the space program had that large an audience.”

He said popularizing space is important for inspiring young people to pursue science, technology and math.

In keeping with this goal, Aldrin also recently taped a guest-star appearance on an episode of the sitcom “30 Rock.”

“That was very enjoyable with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin,” he said.

Aldrin hopes to tailor his “Dancing With the Stars” experience to reflect his background — perhaps by dancing to a moon-themed song at some point.

And there should be secondary benefits from the experience.

“I’m anticipating a renewed smaller belt size shortly,” he said.

The original article can be read at MSNBC.com

Many 80-year olds might shy away from learning a new skill, but not astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The second man to walk on the moon is among the eleven celebrities competing on the tenth season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. Despite the grueling hours of rehearsals, Aldrin is up for the challenge!

Buzz Aldrin is best-known as the U.S. astronaut who was the second person to walk on the moon, but now he’ll be gaining a new fan base as a competitor on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. According to Aldrin, space travel is easy compared to learning the cha-cha. “Walking on the moon was a piece of cake,” Aldrin says. “This is a challenge!”

Aldrin is no stranger to dance. He took Arthur Murray dance instruction many years ago, and attended dances during his time at West Point. “We danced wearing gloves,” he recalls. “I’ve probably neglected my Lightfoot Louie on the dance floor, but I always have a lot to learn. I didn’t take up skiing until I was 50.”

On the new season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, Buzz Aldrin is paired up with dance pro Ashley Costa. So how are the two getting along? ”She’s a dream,” he says. The pair is even planning a trip together! Costa will accompany Aldrin to New Zealand this week for a space conference, so the partners can keep up with their dance rehearsals.

With fierce competition like Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek, Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger, and reality star Jake Pavelka, does Aldrin think he’s got a shot at winning ABC’s Dancing With the Stars? ”I wouldn’t have gotten into the space program if I wasn’t competitive,” he says.


Read the original article on Reality TV Magazine

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon and the show’s first astronaut, will be among 11 celebrity hoofers. “I’m not a dancer, but I’ve decided to give it a whirl,” says Aldrin, at 80, the second-oldest celebrity (after actress Cloris Leachman, 82 at the time) to compete on Stars.

Aldrin isn’t the only buzz surrounding the show’s 10th edition, which hopes to re-energize viewer interest with a smaller but higher-profile celebrity cast, down 30% from last season’s 16.

QUICK QUESTION: Which space-themed song should Buzz Aldrin use on ‘DWTS?’

Aldrin’s rivals include Jon & Kate Plus 8 star Kate Gosselin — tabloid-headline fodder since her marriage crumbled last fall — Olympian Evan Lysacek, NFL showboat Chad Ochocinco and ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, who was surreptitiously filmed nude by a stalker last year.

“We wanted a cast that had impact — we needed every single name to pop,” says Deena Katz, Stars‘ chief celebrity wrangler. ABC revealed the cast on Monday’s season finale of The Bachelor— including bachelor Jake Pavelka.

Stars averaged 18.2 million viewers last season, a 13% drop from Season 8’s 20.2 million, hurt by a lackluster cast and Fox rival So You Think You Can Dance. “We learned some lessons,” says executive producer Conrad Green. “This is definitely up there with the strongest casts ever.”

The show landed Pam Anderson, the Playboy pinup/actress it had been seeking since Season 1. “She’s one of the most iconic women, but she’s rather shy. The big issue was, ‘Do I want to put myself out there?’ ” Green says.

Skater Lysacek signed on before winning gold at the Vancouver Games, while Stars had sought Andrews, unable to schedule dance time due to her ESPN schedule, for two years.

Andrews wavered for weeks, worried about her credibility as a journalist and a perception that she was capitalizing on post-stalker notoriety. Ultimately, she signed on. “I needed to have some fun; this is a way to get my smile back,” she says.

Andrews expects to take a lot of ribbing from the coaches she’s long dealt with as a sideline reporter for ESPN. “I’m hard on them in a playful manner,” Andrews says. “If I get voted off in the first or second week, I don’t think I’ll hear the end of it.”

Aldrin was long reticent about parlaying his Apollo 11 lunar exploits. But Stars is his latest leap into the limelight. He took a giant step for rap-kind in 2009, joining Snoop Dogg to record Rocket Experience, whose proceeds benefit Aldrin’s non-profit ShareSpace Foundation. That came on the heels of his memoir Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, which detailed his tough battles with depression and alcoholism.

Why Stars? “To promote space travel and, for me, to demonstrate how to have a good time,” says Aldrin, who’ll likely generate fan support from his 830,000 followers on Twitter.


Read the original article on USA Today.

While MTV News has never formally endorsed a contestant on Dancing With the Stars (though last season we were torn between rooting for Mya and cheering on Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell), this time there’s no doubt about it: We desperately want Buzz Aldrin to walk away victorious.

The 80-year-old former astronaut has had a surprisingly deep history with MTV. The image of Aldrin walking on the moon — an unprecedented feat he accomplished way back in 1969 — supplied inspiration for a lot of early MTV imagery. And of course, any time anybody wins a Video Music Award, they are honoring Aldrin, as he is the space traveler who inspired the Moonman trophy.

In fact, Aldrin was brought into the MTV fold during the 2009 Video Music Awards, where he hung out with Sway on the red carpet and gave out the prize for Breakthrough Video. “Breakthrough Video! What’s better than that?” Aldrin said to Sway following his introduction.

Aldrin then read off the nominees for the award, taking a particularly intense level of pleasure in saying “Gnarls Barkley” and “Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” (Matt and Kim’s “Lessons Learned” ended up taking home the award.) “That’s a handsome looking guy!” he said to Sway about the Moonman as he exited. Clearly, Aldrin belongs on live TV, and we hope that he conquers the TV dancing world.


Read the original article at MTV.

You heard right! Our own Buzz Aldrin is Dancing With The Stars! In fact, MTV selected him their choice to win! Here’s a sampling of the headlines…

From the MTV Newsroom:

While MTV News has never formally endorsed a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars”… this time there’s no doubt about it: we desperately want Buzz Aldrin to walk away victorious.

From ABC’s official site:

Sure, it’s nice to have your name on a plaque that sits on the surface of the Moon, but we’re thinking this great American hero would love to have a shiny new disco ball trophy in his home right here on Earth.

From USA Today:

The second man to walk on the moon and the show’s first astronaut, will be among 11 celebrity hoofers. “I’m not a dancer, but I’ve decided to give it a whirl,” says Aldrin.
















DANCING WITH THE STARS – BUZZ ALDRIN & ASHLY COSTA – Astronaut, scientist/inventor, bestselling author, advocate for man’s future in space, Buzz Aldrin is considered one of the greatest heroes of space exploration. He partners up with ASHLY COSTA (formerly DelGrosso), who returns for her fourth season. The all-new cast of celebrities and their professional partners hit the dance floor on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars with the highly anticipated two-hour season premiere, MONDAY, MARCH 22 (8:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/CRAIG SJODIN)

In January, President Obama announced a new budget for NASA that would, newspaper headlines screamed, “Eliminate Funds for Manned Missions to the Moon.” Instead, the budget proposes new missions in near-Earth orbit. It also directly challenges and empowers the private sector to push the envelope of human space travel, and implicitly puts America on track to perfect life support and other technologies that can be tested closer to home before embarking on more distant destinations in space.

Many said the president’s decision was misguided, short-sighted and disappointing. Having the experience of walking on the moon’s surface on the Apollo 11 …


You can read the complete article at the Wall Street Journal.

First, is the idea of what type of commercial crew-carrying vehicle should follow the Space Shuttle. Next is why we should extend the life of the Shuttle program for a small number of additional flights. And last, what those Shuttles should carry up to the International Space Station – a true spacecraft that would live only in space.

Right now, NASA is hoping to spend about a billion dollars each year beginning next October to speed the development of a new fleet of all-commercial spaceships that would act as space taxis. These machines would take American astronauts and others bound for the orbiting station, but also serve as a vehicle for the repeated use of researchers and experimenters. I’m urging NASA to foster the development of what I call runway landers. No, that’s not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It’s a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do.

My reasoning is if these new spacecraft are to be true space taxis, then returning their human crew and perhaps research experiments quickly is essential. Landing in the ocean and waiting for the navy to come alongside and haul you out of the drink is what space capsules require. And after the capsule is recovered, it would take weeks for the ship to return to port. The astronauts might be flown home earlier by helicopter, but the cargo, and the capsule, will still be waiting long after the flight has faded from the business news web sites. This is just ridiculous, and no way to foster a true commercial space industry.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home. This is no way to treat a spaceship — making it become a boat at the end of the flight? By comparison landing on a runway in the heart of a military or civilian airport or specially constructed spaceport would speed the retrieval and replacement of the cargo and crew. If that landing site is also the launching site, and the ship is fully reusable, then it can be mated to a new booster and readied for flight in a few weeks. This is exactly what we have learned flying the Shuttle for the last 30 years.

And, speaking of the Space Shuttle, why are we retiring it before the replacement vehicle is available? Makes no sense to me when there are enough parts to fly the Shuttles for other two, three or four flights, say. By stretching out the remaining handful of flights, we can close the infamous space flight “gap” that looms ahead between Shuttle retirement and first flights of the new commercial craft. Why should American’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars go to Russia to buy flights on their Soyuz rockets, as is the current plan? Would it not be a better and more sensible thing to use that money to extend – only briefly – the life of the Shuttle?

Speaking of which, in the current debate, folks have seemed to forget that if we need a heavy lift booster to haul large payloads up to orbit, we already have one now-it’s called the Space Shuttle. And I have a mission in mind for these handful of extra flights.

In storage at Marshall Spaceflight Center, and elsewhere around the country are spacecraft components from which we can build a true spaceship, one worthy of the name. I’ve called the Exploration Module, or XM. This vehicle, lifted up to orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in its final missions, would be a true spacecraft that lives only in space. Just like the Lunar Module Eagle that Neil Armstrong and I rode down to the moon’s surface during our Apollo 11 flight. Once docked to the International Space Station, astronaut crews could practice and train for future deep space missions, to encounter asteroids say, or the moons of Mars.

If the XM was shielded and connected with a spacecraft like the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle or some other return-to-Earth craft, once tested at the space station, we could take it out for a spin, say cycling between the Earth and the moon. My concept for a cycling spaceship, now universally called the Aldrin cycler, could be fashioned out of the XM. All we’d need would be a rocket to attach to it, maybe like the Centaur liquid hydrogen upper stage flown many times aboard many different launchers – and managed by Ohio’s Glenn Research Center.

Consider what I’m proposing: commercial vehicles fly from the surface of the Earth to the station. Their destination – the XM, is built from existing hardware and managed by say the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The spaceship’s propulsion and life support system could be managed by Huntsville’s Marshall Spaceflight Center. And everything is assembled, tested and launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Commercial providers do what they do best – flying people and cargo from Earth. NASA does what it does best – build deep space vehicles – and there is sufficient work to keep all of the existing Project Constellation centers humming along.

As someone once said, “Mission Accomplished!”


Published in The Huffington Post. Read the original.

In a nutshell, Aldrin supports President Obama’s revised vision for NASA space exploration. This means canceling a return trip to the lunar surface and concentrating on other destinations first, pushing the envelope of human endeavor.

Here’s the full text of Aldrin’s press release (via The Office of Science and Technology Policy):

Statement from Buzz Aldrin: A New Direction in Space

Today I wish to endorse strongly the President’s new direction for NASA. As an Apollo astronaut, I know the importance of always pushing new frontiers as we explore space. The truth is, that we have already been to the Moon – some 40 years ago. A near-term focus on lowering the cost of access to space and on developing key, cutting-edge technologies to take us further, faster, is just what our Nation needs to maintain its position as the leader in space exploration for the rest of this century. We need to be in this for the long haul, and this program will allow us to again be pushing the boundaries to achieve new and challenging things beyond Earth. I hope NASA will embrace this new direction as much as I do, and help us all continue to use space exploration to drive prosperity and innovation right here on Earth.

I also believe the steps we will be taking following the President’s direction will best position NASA and other space agencies to send humans to Mars and other exciting destinations as quickly as possible. To do that, we will need to support many types of game-changing technologies NASA and its partners will be developing. Mars is the next frontier for humankind, and NASA will be leading the way there if we aggressively support the President’s plans.

Finally, I am excited to think that the development of commercial capabilities to send humans into low earth orbit will likely result in so many more earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of spaceflight. I can personally attest to the fact that the experience results in a different perspective on life on Earth, and on our future as a species. I applaud the President for working to make this dream a reality.

Buzz Aldrin

Feb. 1, 2010

[Full text PDF can be downloaded from the OSTP.gov website]

I personally agree with many of his points, especially the part about “pushing the boundaries to achieve new and challenging things beyond Earth.” However, I’m dubious as to when this new and invigorated vision for NASA is going to take shape.

Scrapping the Constellation Program (or a large portion of it) is one thing, developing a more realistic replacement is quite another. I suppose we’ll have to remain patient to see how Congress reacts to the White House’s new vision before we can start over-analyzing the future of manned exploration of the solar system.

What do you think? Is Buzz’s enthusiasm on the money? Or do you think it’s misplaced? Canceling a 9 billion dollar program just to start over may sound wasteful, but will a fresh look at this challenging issue stimulate not only NASA but develop an exciting prospect for commercialized spaceflight?

You can read the original article at discovery.com