by Buzz Aldrin
My choice to study the employee programs at Eastern Airlines had not been arbitrary or accidental. My aunt had been a flight attendant with Eastern, and had later married a vice president of the company. Additionally, Eastern’s CEO and chairman of the board was none other than former astronaut Frank Borman. I thought for sure I’d be welcomed to do my research with Eastern.
I wasn’t. When I went to Eastern’s headquarters in Miami to explore what the airline was doing to help pilots who might have alcohol problems, I was informed that Frank had just revised Eastern’s procedures. He was very standoffish about me sticking my nose in his programs. Frank and I had always been competitive during our stints at NASA, but I was still somewhat surprised at the lack of cooperation. Unknown to me at the time, Frank was already experiencing difficulties with his unionized employees, troubles that would eventually lead to the airline being bought out by Texas Air. No wonder he didn’t appreciate my asking what treatment programs they offered to help the alcoholics in his planes!
SHORTLY AFTER COMPLETING my program at Rutgers, I returned to California to join Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins at a private Apollo 11 tenth anniversary celebration at the home of ex-President Richard Nixon in San Clemente. A few days later I headed back to Washington, D.C., to celebrate NASA’s version of the tenth anniversary of the initial Apollo moon landing. Other than the party at the Nixons’, the tenth anniversary celebration was the first time I had seen Neil or Mike since the fifth anniversary. By July 20, 1979, twenty-four Apollo astronauts had reached the moon, and twelve of us had actually walked on the surface. For the milestone anniversaries of the initial landing, NASA liked to pull all of us back together, and it was always good to see everyone.
Those who attended the anniversary celebration were surprised when I showed up with my former wife, Joan. We were living our separate lives by now, with the only contact between us regarding matters pertaining to our children. I had dated a few women since our divorce, and could no doubt have invited someone to come along to Washington, D.C., but when it came time for the Apollo 11 anniversary, I felt that Joan deserved to be there as much as anybody. For all the sacrifices she made and for the price she paid, she should be able to join in the celebration, too. Besides, she had remained friends with most of the astronauts’ wives, so it would be a special treat for her to be reunited with them.
I was pleased people recognized that Joan and I were still friendly toward one another, that we harbored no resentments or bitterness; several remarked that it was refreshing to see a divorced couple getting along so well. Nevertheless, when anyone noticed the two of us together, I was quick to let them know that we had no intentions of reconciling and remarrying.
A lot had happened in our lives since that warm Florida morning on July 16, 1969, when Neil, Mike, and I had set out from Launch Pad 39-A. Our initial landing and the five additional lunar landings to follow ours—the more scientifically exciting trips in my estimation— yielded an enormous amount of information, but, more important, demonstrated to the world the power of American technology once we set our sights on a goal.
Neil was now an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, as well as a consultant to Chrysler. He still liked to dabble in test flights of business jets occasionally, too. Mike Collins had left NASA shortly after our mission to work for the U.S. State Department. He later moved to the Smithsonian Institution, where he directed the creation of the National Air and Space Museum, one of the most popular exhibits in Washington, D.C. By 1979, Mike was one of the top people at the Smithsonian.
And me? I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. But I smiled nonetheless when someone at the anniversary would come up and say, “Gee, Buzz, you look great. What’s been going on in your life since walking on the moon and experiencing that magnificent desolation?” I had finally come to a great sense of peace in overcoming the struggles I had faced, and the changes I had experienced since Apollo 11.
The space program itself had changed tremendously in a decade. The genius Wernher von Braun, who developed the mighty Saturn V rocket that had lifted us toward the moon, had passed away. Americans had not flown in space for more than four years, and there was some question about when the space shuttle would actually be ready to fly, although NASA hoped that it could make its initial forays into space in 1980. At the time of the tenth anniversary, I knew that we had no plans to return to the moon for at least another decade, if then.
Nevertheless, the festivities in Washington, D.C., were upbeat, warm, and inspiring. President Jimmy Carter honored Neil, Mike, and me at a White House ceremony, followed by a public ceremony on the Mall, where we received a standing ovation from the crowd. In the National Air and Space Museum, we answered the usual questions from the media, including the inevitable “Would you go again?” Neil said that he would take the flight again “in a minute.” Mike Collins said he would go again, too, but then quipped, “But it would take more than a minute to get ready.” When the spotlight fell on me, my mind quickly flashed back through the stress of the world tour, the subsequent mental depression, alcoholism, and the breakup of two marriages in the last decade, and I said, “I’m not sure I would go again.”
In truth, I was more passionate about getting other people into space than going back myself. That was one of the positive aspects I saw in the space shuttle. It held the potential for more than just a few highly trained specialists to travel into space. The shuttle was basically a space truck with a cab that could seat seven and a cargo hold large enough to carry a Greyhound bus and more. The plan was to fly to and from orbit every few weeks, hauling up satellites and other equipment, as well as men and women to a permanent space station. My hope was that not just pilots, scientists, and engineers would go into space, but that one day ordinary citizens—doctors, accountants, musicians, writers, and artists would experience space, too.
That’s why in 1979 I got excited about creating a program along with Dr. Dick Boolootian to help United Airlines 727 pilots learn how to fly the space shuttle. The shuttle system was little more than a huge rocket booster attached to a winged orbiter space vehicle that looked and operated much like an airplane once the initial fuel tanks and boosters were gone, so it was only logical that with a little training, most pilots could learn how to fly a shuttle. Although such an idea may seem absurd now, at that time it made sense, especially when the shuttle began to fly in April 1981. I spent hours on end in Dick Boolootian’s office bouncing ideas off him, wondering how we could develop space travel for ordinary folks. Others proposed that commercial entities and private enterprises might even want to purchase a space shuttle. Unfortunately, those kinds of creative ideas were quickly squelched after the Challenger disaster in 1986. But from 1979 to 1981, my brain was firing on all pistons, and what fueled the engine was my passion to explore space.
I had been sober for several years now, and while I still struggled with brief periods of depression, I was inspired by the possibilities of how I might use my talents to help renew America’s passion for space exploration.
In February 1982, I became particularly enamored with the idea of Americans going back to the moon. I attended several conferences at the California Space Institute in San Diego, headed up by Jim Arnold, the same organization led today by America’s first woman astronaut, Sally Ride. I had some contacts with General Dynamics regarding the possibilities of establishing a more permanent lunar presence. At another conference in Houston, Dave Criswell made a powerful presentation on the possibility of beaming solar energy back from the moon. Dave got everyone excited about installing rows of solar panels on the moon’s surface that would be powerful enough to send power to satellite relays and back to Earth. I was thrilled that creative minds were finally thinking about sound economic and practical reasons for going to another celestial body to do more than simply stomp around, do a few experiments, plant some flags, and kick up some dust.
I knew I could apply my knowledge of orbital mechan
ics to develop techniques for a spacecraft to travel continually between Earth and the moon in continuous cycling orbits, almost as though it were a trolley on an invisible pulley system drawing the craft back and forth. Now, if we could just keep doing that, cycling back and forth, we could deliver people, products, food and supplies, more technology, and machinery using hardly any fuel for the translunar spacecraft. You just hop on. It’s only three and a half to four days away. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how easily a system like that could work; well, maybe it does. I called my spacecraft transit concept a “cycler,” and I was excited about the possibilities.
On July 22, 1984, in conjunction with the fifteenth anniversary of Apollo 11, I penned an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times with the title, “Let’s Return to the Moon for Good.” I felt the time was opportune to send explorers back to its dusty surface, but this time we would establish a lunar base and develop the moon’s natural resources in support of space operations. To establish an ongoing method of lunar sorties, I introduced my cycler concept of “coasting trajectories in a translunar rendezvous” space transport system. In one way of looking at it, I saw the moon as one big resource, a natural space station, the ultimate space station orbiting the Earth—and one that already had six American flags on it!
Tom Paine, who had been NASA’s chief administrator when I went to the moon, now lived in and operated out of Santa Monica, California. I visited Tom frequently during this period when there appeared to be a resurgence of interest in a return to the moon. I shared my lunar cycler idea with Tom.
Tom liked what he saw, but he said, “Buzz, you know they are thinking about Mars, and there are some interesting ways of getting to Mars. Why don’t you think about your lunar cycler and make it go to Mars?”
Oh, I thought, that’s very complicated.
“Mars?” I asked. “Are you serious? I thought NASA’s plan was to support a permanent base on the moon.”
Tom raised his eyebrows. “That will never motivate the American people again. We need something bigger, something beyond the moon.”
I understood what Tom was saying, so I went to work adapting my ideas. It was only 1985, and a select few were thinking about going to Mars, but I knew that if we focused our minds and technology in that direction, we could achieve that goal. From Mars we could reach other places around the solar system. My basic operating principle was, how can we do it better?
Not surprisingly, most people didn’t see the need or the relevance of going to Mars, and I began to get a reputation for proposing harebrained ideas. “Are you serious, Buzz? Do you really think you can shuttle people on a cycler back and forth between the Earth and the moon, much less to Mars?”
“No, I guess not,” I’d reply. But I really did.
I started doing basic computations, drawing the relative orbits of Earth and Mars, and by the summer of 1985 I discovered that there was a way to transport people to Mars on what I developed as the Aldrin Mars Cycler. Like space trolley cars, the spacecraft would continue in perpetual cycling orbits between the two planets, picking up and dropping off detachable “taxi” transfer vehicles that could then carry crews and supplies to and from the surface of each planet. The trolley systems could use the planets’ gravitational pull as a slingshot propelling the cycler spacecraft back and forth. I estimated that a trip between Earth and Mars could take as little as five months using this technique. The way I figured it, we were halfway there—I was ready to go!
MEANWHILE, I WAS also traveling to various locations on Earth to engage in another of my passions—scuba diving. The first dive I ever took was with my 22nd Fighter Squadron off the coast of Tripoli, Libya, where we were on gunnery training in 1957 while stationed in Germany. Our squadron leader had some diving experience, so on our recreational day he took us to the French Sur Mer Club, where we strapped on some scuba tanks and dove off the pier into the clear Mediterranean waters off the north coast of Africa. Enamored with the underwater world, I signed up for a diving course on my next vacation with my family to a small village between Nice and Cannes on the French Riviera. I bought my first tank and regulator, and it has been a passion of mine ever since. That’s why I jumped at the chance to become the first astronaut to train for weightlessness underwater in neutral buoyancy when NASA suggested the idea. In my experience, being able to orient your body in any direction while underwater, without feeling the consequences of gravity is akin to the sensation of space-walking.
My oldest son, Mike, was a flight attendant with Cayman Airlines and also an avid scuba diver. At the time, most airlines had what they called “friends and family passes,” free or greatly discounted travel tickets. I traveled nearly everywhere Cayman Airlines flew, which included many of the islands in the Caribbean, and sometimes Mike came along and joined me on a few dives. It was probably one of the best seasons in our father-son relationship. The diving trips kept me active and in circulation, but, more significantly, they helped me prove to myself that I did not need to have anyone with me, and that I could stay sober and interact with people without slipping back into drinking. I traveled so much on Cayman Airlines that the airline asked me to become an honorary board member.
On one of my many diving trips, I met the world-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle. A born explorer, Sylvia grew up in my home state of New Jersey, in the town of Camden. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University, and later became chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. An outspoken advocate of undersea research, she also hoped to raise public awareness of the damage done to our aquasphere by pollution and environmental degradation. By the time I met her, Sylvia’s National Geographic books and films about the sea were considered among the best.
She was smart, sassy, and easy to look at in a bathing suit. We hit it off immediately. I was diving in Nassau at the same time she was there assisting in the underwater scenes for a James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only. Sylvia invited me to help out on the filming of the shark scenes. My job was basically shooting shark “B roll,” additional film to be worked in as needed later. It was great fun, and I enjoyed helping.
One of Sylvia’s more widely known scientific expeditions took her to the Galápagos, off the coast of Ecuador, an adventure on which she invited me to accompany her. I declined due to other demands on my schedule, and to this day, not going on that extraordinary trip is one of my few regrets.
I did, however, accompany Sylvia on a number of other expeditions, most notably a ten-day trip to the Gulf of Akaba, aboard the Sun Boat, a large dive boat that had staterooms below, a briefing room on the middle level, and an upper observation deck. We dove in the northern part of the Red Sea on the east side of Sinai, then flew to Tel Aviv together, and went down to Elat, where we toured their aquarium. Along with divemaster Amos Nakum, Sylvia was collecting specimens for the California Aquatic Museum in San Francisco, where she was on the staff. She was trying to get pictures of a photoflurethicon, a fish that had fluorescent qualities that could be seen underwater at night. Wed do four dives a day, the last one being at night. By the time our crew pulled off our wet suits each evening, we were worn out, but thrilled.
Besides being a meticulous scientist, Sylvia had a quirky sense of humor, too. When she and I were diving together, she loved to sneak up on divers who were close to the caves, intently looking at some strange formation. Sylvia grabbed their fins and frightened the daylights out of them.
In 1979, Sylvia performed one of her most amazing feats, walking without a tether on the sea floor at a lower depth than any human being had ever previously done. Wearing a pressurized suit that looked more like it belonged on the Sea of Tranquillity, she traveled in a submersible down to a depth of 1,250 feet below the surface off the coast of Oahu, in Hawaii. At the bottom, she detached herself from the vessel and explored for more than two hours with only a communication line connecting her to the submersible.
When an interviewer once asked her about feeling alone underwater, she s
urprised me by drawing a comparison to Apollo 11:
I suppose some people, many people, are afraid of being alone. But, for example when I go into the forest, I am not alone. There is life all around. If I go into the sea by myself, and I do it a lot, there is life everywhere. I feel sorry for astronauts who, if they were abandoned … would be truly, truly alone. When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were on the moon, they were alone. The closest living creature was Mike Collins out there in the spacecraft that was orbiting the moon. The next stop was Earth. Underwater, every spoonful of water is filled with life. You are really never alone, it just depends on your perspective.13
I admired Sylvia for her scientific and adventurous mind, and it was refreshing to be around a woman unlike those who unduly idolized my moonwalker status. What she accomplished underwater was in many respects as difficult as what I’d done on the moon. We shared a brief romance, but at the time I was not nearly ready for commitment. Over the years, Sylvia and I have remained friends, and I still see her at the annual Explorers Club dinner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Members range from underwater pioneers such as Bob Ballard, of Titanic fame, to mountaineers like the late Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest. And Sylvia is always one of the most respected explorers in the room. She played a crucial role in the reawakening period of my life, and perhaps more than anything, her willingness to explore the unknown prepared me for a shock to my system that would forever alleviate my own sense of aloneness.
