Magnificent Desolation

by Buzz Aldrin

  During this year of our engagement, I felt inspired to resurrect my idea to create a science fiction story about travel between the stars for a book and movie, based on some of my original concepts from the mid-seventies. Lois and I drove to Los Angeles and met with several major talent agents, including IMG and the William Morris Agency, to choose an agent for the project. Coincidentally, I reached out to Tom Clancy in hopes that we could work together on penning the story. With his plate full at the time, he graciously declined, but put in a good word for me with his literary agent, Robert Gottlieb, at the New York office of the William Morris Agency. I soon signed on with Gottlieb, who suggested that I put the science fiction story on hold in favor of a nonfiction insider’s account of the dramatic space race to the moon. In view of the approaching twentieth anniversary of Apollo 11, the story was ripe with even more drama as we uncovered recently declassified documents that showed a much closer U.S.-Soviet moon race than had ever before been realized. Gottlieb brought Malcolm McConnell in as a co-writer to work with me, and we were off to a good start.

  The more activity, the more Lois liked it. I liked it, too, and felt myself slowly but surely becoming more outgoing in my personality. I began to notice that I was smiling more, feeling more.

  In May 1987, Lois and I traveled to our first Cannes Film Festival to attend the premiere of a new French documentary about the Apollo 11 lunar landing. This was an entirely new world for me, a different crowd. Although I had been around kings and queens, and had met presidents, and I lived around the Hollywood and Beverly Hills crowd, Cannes was something else. I had many friends in high places, but for the most part I didn’t socialize with them. Give me a good engineer, a good rocket scientist, and I can talk for hours. But Lois introduced me to a social set that I had only seen on magazine covers as I passed through airports. We met movie stars and producers, pop music artists—every kind of celebrity.

  While we were in Cannes, we met the acclaimed Austrian photographer Helmut Newton. “Oh, you are so beautiful together,” he said to Lois. “I vould love to take a picture of you; both of you.” We told him we would be in Paris in a few days before heading back to the States. Helmut set up a date to shoot a formal photo at the Georges V hotel along the famous Avenue George V just off the Champs–Elysées. As Helmut prepared for the shoot, he didn’t think Lois was wearing a sexy enough dress; he would have preferred her in a low-cut dress, but Lois’s modesty prevailed. “Vell, at least show me more leg,” Helmut pleaded. Lois complied. The result was a formal—and quite leggy—shot of Lois, and me in my dress whites.

  In November, as a surprise for her birthday, and perhaps to make up for the dismal outcome of our first Hawaiian escapade, I took Lois on a trip to the big island of Hawaii where we stayed again at my friend’s hotel in Kona. But this time I took Lois to the Keck Observatory, at the nearly 14,000-foot summit of the extinct volcano Mauna Kea, to gaze through the giant telescope. I had called ahead and made special arrangements, so when Lois and I arrived, the astronomers were prepared for us, with the telescopes already sighted on the moon. Enhanced by a perfectly clear night sky, I showed Lois the precise area where Neil and I had landed on the Sea of Tranquillity. This was the closest Lois had ever been to the moon. As she observed the detailed markings of hundreds of rugged craters covering the surface, she could imagine even more intensely what I had experienced when I was there.

  LOIS AND I were married on Valentine’s Day in 1988, at the Western Savings corporate headquarters in Phoenix, a cavernous, glass building that more closely resembled the Crystal Cathedral than a bank. The sun’s rays streamed down from the sky on this Arizona winter’s day, as if straight from heaven. A fountain flowed through waterways at the main entrance; amid the stately palm trees, it made for a magical setting. I wore my dress whites, and Lois looked beautiful, beaming in a long bejeweled gown, her silvery blonde hair sparkling in the lights, dazzling everyone with her fantastic smile. We entered the wedding by descending a majestic upper staircase to the song “Stairway to the Stars,” slowly stepping down to the first floor, where 300 guests and family members had gathered. A dear childhood friend of Lois’s, a Mormon bishop, officiated at the ceremony, and was brief and to the point. Then he playfully concluded his remarks, saying, “I hope this marriage will be a new high for you, Buzz.” After he pronounced us husband and wife, the building filled with the sounds of “Fly Me to the Moon.”

  Later, as I sipped Perrier with a lime, I said to the crowd, “I was thinking of a phrase I heard from a guy I took a trip with. He said, ‘One small step …’ Seems to me that Lois and I have launched a giant leap.”

  IF MY MIND wandered up into the clouds before our marriage, I spent even more time envisioning new possibilities for space exploration now that I was enjoying my new married life with Lois. I progressed with my Mars Cycler orbits, but for now, what America most needed was a space station to continue its leadership role in space. At the time, NASA and Congress were struggling with the funding required for building the U.S. space station Freedom as proposed by President Reagan. Perhaps if we had a “Starport” facility attached to the station, which could serve as a permanent port for spacecraft venturing back to the moon and cycling ships arriving from and departing for Mars, then the station would greatly expand its usefulness and justify its cost.

  I began to think of the best way to design such a Starport. A few years earlier I had met Buckminster Fuller while living in Los Angeles, and was well acquainted with his use of geodesic domes in architecture. Bucky had an inspired sense of engineering, and we used to trade insights on our latest inventions. Playing off his geodesic forms, I used everything from basic toothpicks to elaborate vector and styrofoam modeling materials to experiment with the shape of an external framework that would house tubular habitat modules large enough for a ten-astronaut crew, and multiple berthing ports where spacecraft would be assembled, repaired, checked out for missions, and refueled. The habitat modules themselves would be adapted from spent fuel tanks already launched into space and guided into position rather than falling back to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. For the framework, I started with triangular pyramid tetrahedral shapes, then twelve-sided dodecahedron forms. I finally settled on an eight-sided framework—a “cubo-octahedron”—that would offer the greatest flexibility, strength, and stability to protect the Starport from collisions with docking spacecraft and from harmful movement caused by rotating solar panels. I figured that even if NASA did not go for the design, at least I might adapt it as a set of toy modeling kits for children, to inspire them and get them excited about our future in space. For this Starport design I was awarded my first U.S. patent on a “cubo-octahedron space station,” just as America decided to adapt elements of the proposed space station Freedom for construction of the newly designed International Space Station.

  SOMETIMES THE NOTORIOUS blue funk still descended over me for no explicable reason, and I would withdraw from the world for periods of as much as several weeks. But Lois continually bolstered me, filling my life with all sorts of encouragement and events. As she did, my mind began to open up, allowing me to be creative once again. I was going to need that creativity for the work I would be doing that summer with Malcolm McConnell on my next book project, Men From Earth, a tribute to the pioneering astronauts and cosmonauts from the space race to the moon era. Malcolm had a summer home and kept a sailboat in the ancient, picturesque village of Lindos on the Greek island of Rhodes, so he suggested, “Why don’t you and Lois come to Greece? It will be a great getaway for you, and we can work on the book without being disturbed.”

  We had been married in February, and were scheduled to go to Greece in July 1988, but on the day we were to leave, I fell into a slump and lost all interest and enthusiasm in going. Why am I writing this book? I thought. NASA’s shuttle fleet had been grounded for over two years since the Challenger accident, and our space program was at a low point. Perhaps the public would not be interested in looking back at the story
of Apollo and how we won the space race, so why bother? Whatever the reason, I didn’t want to go. The taxi was literally sitting out in front of our house, waiting to take us to the airport, and I decided that I was not going to get off the couch. Lois was adamant. “Buzz, we are going to Greece!”

  I sat staring straight ahead.

  “Buzz Aldrin,” she said, putting her cute little nose right in front of mine, “you get off that couch right now. Let’s go!” Lois literally pulled me off the couch, and started dragging me across the floor, but I refused to budge.

  “Buzz, if you don’t get up, I’m going to go get the taxi driver and have him carry you into the car! We are going to Greece!” This prospect got me up.

  So we went to Greece, and had a marvelous time. Malcolm had arranged for us to rent a small apartment near his home, and each day I walked down the colorful village streets to work with him. During our time there, Lois and I visited the Lindos Acropolis. Looking at that structure and recalling the mythology that so epitomized Greek culture, I could envision how modern-day technology had a strange way of fulfilling the “myths” of the people who preceded us. Maybe someday my so-called “fantasies” about space exploration to the stars will be commonplace.

  One day, as Lois and I were walking hand in hand down a nearly deserted street, we saw a man approaching us. As he passed, I called out, “Is that you, Walter?” The man turned around, and sure enough, it was Walter Cronkite! Of all places in the world to run into the CBS Evening News anchorman, who, with one heartfelt wipe of a tear from his eye before a whole nation, sent us on our way that morning as we lifted off on the great Saturn V on our journey to the moon nearly twenty years earlier.

  IN DECEMBER 1988, Federal regulators clamped down on savings and loan institutions throughout the country, including Western Savings & Loan. The company was working hard to meet new regulatory capital requirements amidst a severe downturn in the Arizona real estate market. Lois’s father, Douglas Driggs, founder of Western in 1929, and her brothers, Gary Driggs, serving as president and CEO, and John Driggs, the chairman of the board, had built the family business into one of the most successful savings and loans in the country. Western had survived the Great Depression and prior savings and loan crises in the 1960s, 1970s, and the 1980s, and prided itself on serving the Arizona community’s mortgage needs. The Driggs family felt strongly that Western could survive the current crisis as well, but efforts to secure a rescue package and recapitalization did not pan out. Ultimately, in the late 1980s, they could not avert the failure of virtually the entire Arizona savings and loan industry, regardless of the management strategy of the individual institutions. As part of the colossal savings-and-loan debacle throughout the United States at that time, the government seized Western Savings on June 14, 1989, rendering its stock valueless to the bank’s shareholders. Unlike the multibillion-dollar bailouts of 2008 to save the investment, banking, and financial institutions of America, in 1989 there was no such bailout, and the entire savings-and-loan industry disappeared.

  Overnight, all of Lois’s family’s resources were gone. Not merely reduced, not like a steep drop in the stock market that held out the hope of rebound. No, in one fell swoop, Lois’s and her children’s stock assets in the company were gone. Fortunately, Lois and I were relatively debt-free, with no mortgage payments and no real financial stress. Nevertheless, to lose millions of dollars overnight was an awful setback and loss.

  The bank managers called Lois and said, “You don’t have anything left.” She was devastated, and could see no recovery after the S&L mess. Overnight, everything about our financial picture changed, as Lois’s fortune and the wealth of her children were quite literally wiped out.

  Certainly it upset me that Lois had lost her financial resources, but that sort of change didn’t really have an impact on my attitude toward our relationship. Lois was so self-effacing; she said, “Buzz, if you need or want a wealthy woman, I understand if you want to leave.”

  I thought that was absurd. “Is my course of action going to be any different,” I asked, “just because you no longer have your stock?” No. I still had my modest Air Force pension coming in each month, and intermittent consulting fees to supplement it. On my own, that was all I needed. But from Lois’s standpoint, she had nothing to fall back on.

  For the next few years we had to scramble back from the bottom to build a business of some sort, something that we hoped would allow us to live in a lifestyle at least somewhat similar to the one we had enjoyed during the first part of our marriage. Lois began taking the calls, wheeling and dealing with people or groups that wanted me to come to speak for them or to participate in some special event. Prior to being married to Lois, I had had a secretary come in every so often and simply write a bunch of “thanks, but no thanks” notes, turning down almost every invitation that came to me. I had not wanted to be a public person again.

  But when Lois’s fortune was wiped out, we had to find some way to survive, and it seemed ridiculous to turn down offers from people who were willing to pay me to speak about what I loved talking about anyhow! So we started accepting a few speaking engagements. Lois and her daughter, Lisa Cannon, a Stanford graduate who had left the music business as a performer to work as an entertainment attorney, took care of the business side, negotiating the contracts, and helped me on the performance side to hone my presentations. Before long, I was busy on the speaker’s circuit. That year, with the book advance and a couple of extra endorsement deals that came along, we earned about $250,000. It was a good start, and we felt our lives were rich and full. We didn’t see ourselves as older or slowing down; we were healthy and excited about life.

  My petite little platinum blonde beauty of a wife suddenly turned into a public-relations dynamo. “The business is Buzz!” she proclaimed, and indeed so it became. Lois encouraged me to do interviews and attend more social functions. She protected my reputation in every way, and just had a knack for helping me to be seen in the right places, at the right times. For my part, I loved it. I was the star performer, who just needed to show up on stage as the curtains parted, and did not need to concern myself with any of the logistics. Admittedly, there were a few occasions when I balked, but every time we attended another event, it gave me more of a platform on which to talk about my ideas regarding space exploration. We rarely traveled simply for the sake of travel anymore. Now it was mainly for business. Lois’s father was delighted to see Lois in the business world—finally making that Stanford education pay off!

  ON JANUARY 20, 1989, my fifty-ninth birthday, Lois and I went to Washington, D.C., to attend the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush. While we were there, Lois’s mother passed away, which was a blow to Lois; her mother was like a best friend. Fortunately, we were able to return to Phoenix immediately after the inauguration with the help of our friends Julia and Ambassador George Argyros, who flew us in their private jet to arrive just in time for the funeral. When Lois saw her mother in the casket, she fell apart, dissolving in tears. It was one of the few times since I’d known her that I had ever seen Lois break down. Her tears were genuine and she grieved for a season, but not without hope of being reunited in the hereafter, a belief with which she was raised in her family and church.

  Six months later, on July 20, 1989, we were back in Washington, D.C., at the twentieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I gave my pitch along with Neil and Mike on the steps at the Smithsonian in Washington, and listened as President Bush stated that America would move aggressively forward in space to do three things: first, complete the space station by 2000; second, go back to the moon, this time for keeps, by setting up a base there; and, third, begin missions to Mars. I was elated. This was good news indeed.

  Unfortunately for the space program, the Democratic majority in Congress wanted to thwart Bush 41's plans any way they could, and that included stunting the enthusiasm for getting America’s space program back in gear. “How much does all this cost?” we heard over an
d over again. “Why should we spend all that money when there are so many pressing needs on Earth?”

  A ninety-day feasibility study was done, with Congress concluding that the president’s plans were too expensive, and refusing to fund them. The $400-billion price tag was too outlandish, opponents said. America’s renewed thrust into space was dead on arrival.

  Naturally, I was disappointed. But because of the lack of government support, I began ruminating more about commercial ventures, including space tourism. As I thought about matters, it seemed to me that ShareSpace, the organization I had envisioned several years earlier, was the way to get ordinary citizens into space. I felt sure that enthusiasm and excitement about the exploration of space were lying latent in American adventurers. All we needed to do was to find a way to help them make their dreams a reality. I had witnessed the United Airlines pilots’ excitement over wanting to fly the space shuttle; some companies even wanted to purchase a space shuttle for commercial use. I had known high-profile individuals like John Denver who had a desire to fly into space. I believed that if we could find a way to pay for it, people would want to travel into space and enjoy the experience firsthand. And I was convinced that I had come up with a plan to get them there.

  16

  OH, the PLACES

  YOU WILL GO!

  THE MORE I STUDIED THE COST OF SPACE TOURISM, THE MORE I wondered if there was a better way than just offering seats on the space shuttle to rich people who could afford to spend $20 million or more. The number of those who could afford such an expenditure, while larger than one might think, is still relatively small compared to the people who would be interested in traveling into space if it were an attainable goal.