Magnificent Desolation

by Buzz Aldrin

  The pilot maneuvered the submersible around the Titanic, searching for the items we hoped to raise. We were planning to float a fifteen-ton section of the Titanic’s hull to within 215 feet of the surface. We had six lift bags filled with diesel fuel, which we pulled to within 100 feet of the wreckage. Each of the bags was capable of lifting more than three tons of material. Diesel fuel does not compress under the water’s pressure, and is lighter than water, so ostensibly the lift bags would cause the Titanic’s hull to float. The Nautile’s pilot used the sub’s manipulator arms to connect the bags to the hull section with strong cables. But as we began to lift the hull, one of the cables connecting the lift bags snapped, and another would not release, causing the assembly to become unstable. We tried cutting the rope with a knife in the manipulator arm. But even though we cut the rope, nothing happened. One of the bags had somehow disengaged, so nothing we did was going to bring up the hull. The rough seas had caused the Titanic’s hull to sink into the ocean’s floor. We had already been down about nine hours, and still needed another hour to ascend to the surface. Although the mission itself was scrubbed, the experience for me was truly worthwhile. To have traveled to the moon, Earth’s new frontier, and to the ocean floor, Earth’s deepest frontier, in a span of less than thirty years, was an extraordinary pair of adventures.

  IN 1998, I traveled to the North Pole on the Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker Sovetsky Soyuz, on a trip scheduled by Quark Adventures, organized by The Explorers Club, and headed by Mike McDowell. My longtime friend and ABC network news personality Hugh Downs, and his wife, Ruth, were also aboard. Hugh had a film crew on the ship for the ABC television program 20/20. I had asked Lois if she would like to accompany me to the North Pole, and she said, “No way, but you go and have a good time. Then you can come back and tell me all about it.” If Lois planned to be cold, she preferred to have skis attached to her feet. She didn’t relish the idea of spending a week on a Russian icebreaker. She did, however, find a camping store in Paris where she bought my French couture cold-weather red-orange mountaineering outfit. I felt very warm and quite fashionable—and later wore this same outfit for my “Final Frontiersman” photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

  We flew to Murmansk, Russia, and from there it was a fascinating trip across the Arctic Ocean, slowly crunching our way through the thick ice as we moved northward. The nuclear vessel, with 75,000 horsepower, made the trip without a problem. My fellow passengers numbered about a hundred people from every continent, including a group of Japanese tourists who were among the first to own GPS devices and were constantly trying to figure out where we were. Everyone seemed to get along well, and except for comments about the cold, I got the sense they were inspired by the surroundings.

  During the day as we traveled, the president of the Explorers Club presented lectures along the way. He had been a Navy captain who commanded submarines during the Cold War, and had charted the northern coast of Russia for American spy subs. Once he had actually surfaced a U.S. sub at the North Pole, bringing it up through a break in the ice.

  I enjoyed the lectures, but I spent just as much time sketching out new rocket ideas on a Sovetsky Soyuz scratch pad. I knew that at some point the U.S. space shuttle program would come to an end, and we would need some sort of program to get us back to the moon and on to Mars, so I constantly doodled ideas for new rocket designs. Perhaps because I was on a Russian ship, I thought a lot about the Soviet five-engine rockets, wondering how we might be able to adapt those ideas for American rockets. Some of the configurations I scribbled on those scratch pads later formed the basis of my StarBooster rockets, developed by the band of engineers at my rocket design company that I had formed a few years earlier.

  Despite the freezing temperatures, all of the passengers were on the bridge when we reached 90 degrees north, the latitude of the North Pole relative to the Earth’s equator, and 180 degrees east-west, where the Earth’s longitudinal lines converge. There’s nothing like being “at the top of the world, looking down on creation,” and I could almost hear the soulful voice of my favorite singer, Karen Carpenter, as I took in the wide, frozen expanse. When we had gone as far as we could aboard the icebreaker, two helicopters flew the passengers over to where we were served a meal on the ice. We set up a baseball diamond and played a game of softball at the North Pole, and a group of younger passengers even took an extremely brief swim.

  The photo of the bright red-and-yellow “North Pole” sign planted on the 90N spot surrounded by the nondescript sea of white ice, with our red-and-black Russian nuclear icebreaker in the background, was worth far more than a thousand words. The experience was priceless, causing me to become even more excited as I thought about all the adventures I wanted to share with others by sending them into space.

  I came home invigorated and inspired to formally organize my nonprofit foundation, ShareSpace, with a team of advisers to build upon my lottery concept. It was time to take regular citizen explorers, or “Global Space Travelers” as I would come to call them, up into space for the adventure of a lifetime. We just needed to find the spaceship to take them, and a legal lottery mechanism. But that’s what the American dream is all about, right?

  17

  ADVOCACY for

  AMERICA

  AS THE WORLD WAS APPROACHING A NEW MILLENNIUM, I seemed to catch fire myself, with renewed energy and passion to promote space exploration. Thanks to Lois’s upbeat attitude and positive influence, I felt like a totally changed man, with a beautiful wife and a new life. I was miles above where I had been when I landed on the moon. Certainly, being sober helped me think more clearly, and the organization and comfort Lois provided in our business and at home allowed me to be more creative, all of which gave me more confidence to stand up in public and express my ideas about returning to the moon, creating workable spaceports, and moving on to Mars.

  What I wanted people to understand was that we needed to be talking about a comprehensive vision, a master plan. It wasn’t an either-or proposition—either we go to the moon or we go to Mars. Instead, everywhere I went, I presented an integrated plan showing that my ideas were not the disjointed ramblings of a once-and-forever moon guy, but that at each step along the way, we could chart our course in an evolutionary way. We could be improving the program—and life—for all concerned. By getting more people into space by means of my ShareSpace concepts, and by using renewable rockets, we could lower the costs of space travel for all.

  That was one of the reasons why, in 1996, I started a rocket design company to develop the StarBooster family of reusable rockets, based on some of my hand-drawn schematics and sketches of new rockets that I had been making for some time. My plan was to use existing rocket reliability and transform expendable rockets—the kind we’ve all watched burn up and plunge into the sea or disintegrate in space—into recyclable rockets, including “fly-back boosters” that would be fueled by liquid rocket fuel and return to Earth, land on a runway, to be used again and again, providing significant savings.

  As it stood, not enough viable work existed to justify NASA making weekly or even monthly flights into space with the space shuttle. But if more people wanted to go, and good old American ingenuity and the forces of competition were encouraged, the result would be more efficient and affordable space travel for all, with more opportunities for exploration at less cost to the government.

  I was so passionate about these ideas that I willingly testified before a House congressional committee, chaired by Congressman Dennis Hastert, in May 1997, the first committee hearing ever to take place at the National Air and Space Museum. Our charred Columbia command module from Apollo 11 served as an appropriate backdrop. I presented my ideas promoting space tourism as one of the key ingredients to jump-start America’s dawdling space program, and for sustaining and expanding the future exploration of space.

  After a brief introduction, I quickly got to the thrust of my argument:

  My chief message is th
is: America must dream, have the faith to achieve the dream, and develop the fullest possible knowledge of the possibilities that await us. Even the best-trained and the brightest engineers, scientists, businesspeople, and political leaders, if they have no vision, are mere placeholders in time. We must dare again to take risks as a nation. And we must see again that this generation of Americans—those alive today—have at their fingertips the technology and the recent history necessary to trigger a cascade of vast new discoveries for this living generation and those that will follow.

  Several of the congressmen nodded in approval as I spoke—while others were simply nodding—so I stoked the fires even more. I talked about how the successful Apollo program had led to technological breakthroughs that we now take for granted, such as satellite-driven communications. Other goals, such as routine commercial flights to and from space, space tourism, settlements on the moon, and the human exploration of Mars, had not happened yet, but I encouraged the committee to press forward and accomplish those goals within our lifetimes.

  But each of these advances requires three things: knowledge, faith, and commitment. Knowledge that we can achieve these feats for all mankind, faith in ourselves, in things larger than ourselves, and in the importance to mankind, that we use the opportunities at our fingertips, and a newfound national commitment to do what God has given us the power to do. In short, I’m here today to issue a call for national action.

  I felt almost as though I were a “space evangelist” as I attempted to inspire America’s leaders to get back in space:

  We have within our grasp the technology to get everyday citizens into space routinely and safely for the thrill of a once-in-a-life-time ride and adventure. We also have the technology to cost-effectively return to the moon again. We’re even at the threshold of being able to affordably get to Mars with manned missions.

  I knew that the members of Congress were already seeing dollar signs in their minds, so I sought to remind them of the incredible potential that was lying untapped on the moon and in space.

  “Imagine having space-based solar energy assets and space-based resources that truly keep this planet pollution-free and make budget deficits literally unthinkable by their sheer richness,” I said slowly, looking from committee member to committee member as I spoke.

  That’s what awaits us if we make the right investments. The future I allude to has yet to be built. But all this is not fiction. It’s very close to being fact. A clean, green, non-polluted Earth drawing on abundant space-tapped energy from our sun, passenger travel to and from space for commercial and adventure activity, the step-by-step advance to Mars, even low-cost cycling missions to and from that planet and then beyond. All these goals are worth pursuing and well within our grasp. Once more, they will reenergize this nation, and, if Apollo is any example, spur rippling economic growth.

  I knew that my points were being well received, and even the committee members were getting excited. I wanted to lay out their role in my vision for them.

  You know the Apollo program’s miraculous achievements were built on a dream by this nation’s leaders and our people. Let us take stock of ourselves and our place in the history of mankind. And let us not be timid or content to rest on our laurels. Already a generation has passed since we walked on the moon. I will say it again, and pray, as I did when we sat on the moon, that we can start this engine.

  I knew that time was limited and I needed to bring my remarks to a close, but I wanted the committee members to realize that we were not merely talking about energizing our economy or kicking up some more dust on another celestial body. No, these ideas were much bigger than that. So I made an impassioned plea:

  The one argument that I feel is most compelling is, the mission is larger than ourselves. We were called together as a nation and as a species by the Apollo missions to the moon. And there is simply no measure of the good that these explorations brought to us all, not least by bringing the global community closer together.

  I closed my statement by issuing a final word of inspiration: “As I like to say with my feet firmly on the ground, on Earth today, as surely as they were on the moon nearly thirty years ago, let’s join together and shoot for the stars, ad astra.”

  For a moment I thought the committee was going to give me a standing ovation. They didn’t, but they were obviously moved by my presentation, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was done. But I wasn’t going anywhere just yet. The congressmen had questions for me. I answered them as straightforwardly as possible, continuing to lay out the vision for America’s getting back into space in a big way.

  After a while, the committee chairman, Dennis Hastert, started to pull the meeting to a close. “First of all, Dr. Aldrin, let me just say that this is an interesting hearing we’re having. Usually we’re looking into the problems in government and somebody breaking the laws and where dollars are misspent and all these types of things. In a sense, you bring us today some vision that we don’t usually get to look at and … as a backdrop for where we go in the future, as politicians and members of Congress and just the nature of our work, we don’t do the vision thing enough.”

  Several other congressmen had more questions for me, and Chairman Hastert did not seem to be in any hurry to get me out of the hot seat. The questions naturally turned to what value there would be in going to Mars. I had been thinking of my answer for nearly twenty years. “Let’s look briefly at the value of going to the moon,” I began.

  In the last twenty-seven years, one thing has stood out that, as I meet people, they want me to know where they were when we were on the moon, and they remember vividly that particular day. They are almost obsessed to come up and tell me where they were. And I am trying to understand what that means. I am convinced that what it means is that there was value added to a human’s life on that day, and I multiply that by the millions of people that experienced that, and I think we are getting close to understanding the value of human society challenging itself and carrying out a commitment successfully.

  More nods from the committee members kept me going.

  It’s not the value of the rocks that we brought back, or the great poetic statements that we all uttered. Those things aren’t remembered. It’s that people witnessed that event.

  We are not going to justify going to Mars by what we bring back. Whether there is life or not shouldn’t be a determining factor in whether we go to Mars. We are going to make a commitment and carry that out.

  And what is that commitment going to do to this world today that is so focused on the immediate payoff—the attitude of “What’s in it for me right now?” Everything around us, fed by the communications industry, focuses on fixing today, and it doesn’t focus on where we are going to be in the next twenty to fifty years. We need something that draws away from today, and internationally supporting a thriving settlement on Mars and all the benefits that it is going to bring back here on Earth, and the feel-good attitude that people are going to have, that’s going to be the value of going to Mars.

  I took a breather as Congressman Jim Turner jumped into the conversation. “It is exciting just to listen to you speak,” he said to me. “I guess as I listen to you lay out your vision, Dr. Aldrin, it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to figure out a way to get that common commitment.”

  I thought I knew where the congressman was going, so I followed his lead, and said:

  People want to journey into space; they want to share that participation. Just ask them. I go around and they want to know when they can get into space. And it is doable. The tourism industry worldwide is a multibillion-dollar industry. Let’s just unleash that into space, and not just for the affluent, but with wisely worked-out lottery principles. You can form a corporation and issue shares and distribute the dividends by random selection for thousands of space-related prizes, including a ride into orbit. And that could develop the rocket and the spacecraft systems needed to go to the moon. Not the other way aro
und. We are not going to make a commitment to go to the moon and then use those vehicles for tourism; it should be the other way.

  There. I’d done it. I’d actually laid out my ShareSpace concept in front of a congressional committee. Either they’d think I was nuts, or they could recognize that the future was staring them right in the face.

  Whether or not Congress got the message, the media certainly did. One newspaper called me “a traveling evangelist for cost-effective manned space travel to Mars and maybe beyond.” The Washington Post said something similar: “Aldrin pitches a space race renaissance. He sounds like a high-tech preacher hustling a mega-billion-dollar gospel of the stars.”

  Maybe so. I was glad to point out features of the replica Eagle lunar module used in 1969 and on display at the Air and Space Museum. But my real focus was on the future and convincing people to dream space dreams once again. I did not want “a giant leap for mankind” to be nothing more than a phrase from the past.

  In May 1998, I introduced my newly formed nonprofit ShareSpace Foundation to the public in the National Space Society’s magazine, Ad Astra (“to the stars”). I was currently chairing the NSS Board of Directors, and I couldn’t think of a better audience to share the genesis of my hopes for ShareSpace than the space advocates and enthusiasts who comprised the membership of this grassroots organization. I called out for citizen participation in a lottery-type program, where for a nominal price of say, ten dollars, they would gain access to prizes in a range of space-tourism experiences. The purpose of using the lottery approach was to strengthen and accelerate the growth of commercial space, along with furthering opportunities and activities for people in space. And besides, lotteries are as American as apple pie and space exploration. ShareSpace may have initially been conceived in fictional form in my 1996 space novel, Encounter with Tiber, but the message of the novel’s character Sig Jarlsbourg pretty much said it all: “If you want that better world, we need to see space tourism take off right away, and it can’t be as a plaything of a tiny group of super-rich people. It’s got to have broad-based public support and enthusiasm right from the start.”