Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrinis an American engineer and former astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11, he was one of the first two humans to land on the Moon, and the second person to walk on it. He set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on July 21, 1969, following mission commander Neil Armstrong. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer with the Command Pilot rating...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth20 January 1930
CityGlen Ridge, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
Fear, to people who have been in aviation and combat (such as) fighter pilots ... is something you learn how to deal with and set aside, ... It's a very disabling emotion. You want to be alert as you possibly can.
People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.
There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'
Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can't believe that people wouldn't line up for that possibility.
When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you're there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn't be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you're there.
The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.
Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood.
It's real easy to manufacture what you think the people want to hear. But that's not very honest.
Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.
Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.
People communicate in Twittering ways. I've learned how to do that.
Let's not spend resources that we don't need to be sending astronauts back to the moon. Let's not spend expensive resources on bringing people who have reached Mars back again. Prepare them to become a growing colony.
In my mind, public space travel will precede efforts toward exploration -- be it returning to the moon, going to Mars, visiting asteroids, or whatever seems appropriate. We've got millions and millions of people who want to go into space, who are willing to pay. When you figure in the payload potential of customers, everything changes.