Buzz Aldrin: The Right Stuff

07 Jan Buzz Aldrin: The Right Stuff

Sage advice can be gleaned indirectly from the words of men who’ve done amazing things. In this interview series by Jim Clash called “The Right Stuff”, we share nuggets of wisdom from great men who’ve taken big risks in life — astronauts, mountain climbers, ocean divers, Olympians, scientists — and come out the better for it.

What exactly is the right stuff? Other than the name of a famous movie and book about space, it is a state of mind. The term is a throwback to a time when character really counted — when men routinely risked it all not to get rich, bloviate or self-aggrandize, but for their country, science and exploration.

Some of the interviews have appeared in The Explorers Journal, the flagship publication of The Explorers Club, the preeminent worldwide organization for exploration since its inception in the early 1900s. Others, like this one, have appeared in Clash’s book Forbes’ To The Limits (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

Clash, a fellow and director at the club, is a seasoned adventurer himself. In reporting for Forbes and other publications for the last two decades, he has flown in a MiG-25 Foxbat at Mach 2.6 to the edge of space; driven the Bugatti Veyron at its top speed of 253 mph; skied to the South Pole; visited the North Pole twice; and climbed the Matterhorn, 23,000-foot Aconcagua and virgin peaks in Antarctica and Greenland. He has also purchased a ticket from Virgin Galactic Airways to fly into suborbital space in 2013.

On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin became the second man to step onto the lunar surface, a mere 19 minutes behind Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong. Since then, Armstrong has pretty much ducked the press. But Aldrin has continued to reach for the stars, literally. In 1996, he wrote a science fiction novel, Encounter with Tiber and, more recently, he competed on the television show Dancing with the Stars. Most importantly, though, Aldrin has continued to be a vocal advocate for space exploration.

The American hero, 80, is sorely disappointed with the rate of manned spaceflight’s progress over the last four decades: since the last lunar landing in 1972, it has consisted solely of shuttle flights a few hundred miles above the Earth’s surface. Whom and what does he blame? An increasingly cautious approach to general exploration, for one. The end of the Cold War, for another. At the height of the U.S. Apollo program, NASA’s $6 billion budget accounted for 4.4% of the federal budget; in 2010, at around $19 billion, it is less than 1%.

Let’s start in 1969. What do you remember about your historic lunar landing?

Buzz Aldrin : Obviously, when we touched down, we were very relieved. Neil and I acknowledged that with a wink, a nod and a pat on the shoulder. The immediate surface was very powdery, as best we could see looking down from 15 feet. Off in the distance was a very clear horizon, maybe with a boulder. And, of course, the brightness of the sunlit surface was almost like looking out at sunlit snow. Your pupils close down, just as in orbit when the sun is on the spacecraft. The sky is black as can be, but there’s no way you can see stars. They’re there, of course, but you can’t make them out because they’re too faint with all the ambient light in your eyes.
Did the two of you exchange private words?
BA : I don’t think it occurred to either of us to say something private. It’s just not the way we related. The discussion had to do with procedure, not, “Have a good time out there, I’ll see you in 20 minutes.” Knowing we were going to call ourselves Tranquility Base — but we had never rehearsed that because we didn’t want people to know — we hadn’t inserted the historic announcement into our procedures checklist. So when Neil said, “Tranquility Base, the Eagle has landed,” it struck me as, “Gee, we’re in the middle of something, Neil, don’t do that.”
When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, how did you feel?
BA : I could probably manufacture all sorts of wondrous things. But in retrospect, I felt like we were proceeding with things on the checklist, such as carrying the camera down. There are lots of little things, more than meets the eye.
What about when you stepped onto the moon yourself?
BA : Can you give me some multiple choices I can pick from to describe my emotions? I don’t go through life verbalizing what I feel. After the fact, it’s really kind of difficult. I guess if you’re used to a lot of describing, like a writer, those things come easily. We were not really picked to do that. That’s why, I guess, the greatest inadequacy I’ve experienced in my life is when someone asks, “What did it feel like?” I have a very hard time trying to tell someone.
What were your first words?
BA : I don’t know what the first ones were. I don’t know that they had any significance. The ones I felt most descriptive were very spontaneous and prompted by an observation of just looking around and responding. At the time, all I could come up with was an acute contrast. So I said “magnificent desolation.” Those are opposing words. The magnificence of humans after millions of years being to make a spacecraft capable of visiting another object — and then successfully landing it — what an achievement! But I was also impressed with the total desolation I saw in front of me: black sky, no stars and the horizon clearly curving away.
Any disappointment that Armstrong was first?
BA : Not at all. I recognized when we, as a crew, were picked to be the first landing mission, there would be a great loss of privacy, a great burden of public speaking, which never appealed to me. If I were given a choice, there was something inside that said, “You might be better off, Buzz, on the second or third lunar landing, because you won’t have as much of this. You will also get to do more things when you’re on the moon. Maybe the burden of being on the first landing is something you’d just as soon not have to put up with.” But the competitive nature of everybody was such that you weren’t about to turn down something offered to you. You may never get another chance.

When you look up at the moon now, can you believe you were there? Does it seem real to you?
BA : Well, it was very real, but it’s a categorized realness. It fits into a niche. The moon I see now is the same moon I saw before. Except that before, when I looked at it, it was in anticipation of what it would be like when I got there. That’s behind me now.

Were you ever afraid, in space or as a Korean War fighter pilot?
Buzz Aldrin : There’s always an interest in safety and dealing with something that goes wrong. But for the high-visibility performer, the pilot, his reactions are so important. Not making a mistake is more important than fear of physical danger. A mind concerned about danger is a clouded mind. It’s paralyzing.
Did the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia Shuttle disasters traumatize us?
BA : Yes, the TV coverage did. Now, you don’t want to deny freedom of the press. And the value of human life is very high. We need to keep a balance. But the explorer, the climber of mountains, all those who want to go out and do these things ought to be able to without risks being blown out of proportion.
Why is space tourism taking so long to get off the ground?
BA : One impediment is the fear of catastrophe. And I’m not sure how you deal with that. Does it mean we don’t fly civilians in space? Do we only do it from our couches? Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize? We are scared out of our wits. We are a risk-averse society now.
You have long been a pioneer of something called ShareSpace. Explain.
BA : Even the rosiest of forecasts predicts it will be a long time before the average price for a ticket into space is affordable to ordinary citizens. Is space tourism, despite its potential promise of space travel for all, destined to replace a well-trained NASA elite with a well-heeled economic elite? Not necessarily. There’s a classic mechanism for ensuring that a high-priced asset is distributed in an egalitarian manner — the lottery. For the price of an average ticket, ordinary citizens could gain access to a space lottery; prizes in the near future could include sub-orbital and orbital flights. There is no reason why later prizes could not include trips around the moon and Mars.
Has celebrity status helped you promote the business of space?
BA : There is no doubt that the public focuses on achievements of significance, and certainly I was fortunate to be part of Apollo 11, a very significant achievement. It lends credibility and a desire to at least listen to what that participant has to say. But you don’t want to misuse that just because you achieved something in the past. It doesn’t mean you necessarily know much about the future or the present.
If you could return to space, as the retired senator John Glenn did when he was 77, would you?
BA : I think that those of us fortunate enough to participate in Apollo and fly to the moon had our share of rewards for the time we put in. To try to edge into another space flight is kind of incongruous. The shuttle, for example, is an aerospace transport; it carries people and cargo. It’s not an exploration command module or a lunar lander. It’s not a pioneering vehicle.
Why haven’t we sent a man to Mars yet?
BA : Sending humans to Mars is not going to happen until the cost of rocket launches comes down. The best way for that to happen is spacecraft reusability. And that requires a high flight rate with valuable payloads. People fit into that category. If you put people into space, you need at least to bring down the container that took them up, and if it’s a two-stage rocket, we need to recover the larger booster and reuse it, too. An inspired political leader with the backing of Congress and corporations could get us behind a commitment that would take people to Mars within 20 years. Every five years we could accomplish something of significance.
You have written science fiction and remarked that the Apollo 11 crew saw a UFO in 1969. Do you believe there is life in the universe other than on Earth?
BA : I’m pretty careful with what I say I believe in. If you say you believe in something, you are beholden to defend it. Somebody has to be at the top. We’re not bad, we’re pretty advanced for a species. But somebody has to be leading the pack in this universe. And chances are that somebody else is.
What’s the biggest problem with NASA?
BA : We’ve got government careers now that are based on the latest polls. This is the epitome of short-term thinking. You’re asking somebody to vote on something he has no responsibility for later. What’s necessary is to look beyond the problems of the moment, to project where we’d like to be in 20 to 30 years. Mars should be within our grasp by then. A number of us feel that it’s inevitable there will be a permanent base there. And that within 500 years, we will journey to the stars. It’s inbred within us to do that. It’s human curiosity. If we don’t, we’ll fall by the wayside. Excerpted from Forbes To the Limits by James M. Clash (John Wiley &Sons, 2003). Clash can be contacted via e-mail at jclash@explorers.org.

Read the Original Article at Askmen.com