Mission to Mars (3 page)

So be it for historical artifacts. But first a little history about my own space journey to today.

I know firsthand that challenging times often come first before the most rewarding moments. Over the centuries we have seen powerful reminders of those who explored beyond the boundaries of what they knew, from Copernicus and Galileo to Columbus. Jumping to the 20th century, it was on a windswept morning in 1903 at Kitty Hawk that the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. That same year, my mother, Marion Moon, was born.

My father, Edwin Eugene Aldrin, was an engineer and an aviation pioneer—and a friend of Charles Lindbergh and Orville Wright. Taking a job with Standard Oil, my dad flew his own plane coast to coast. He later served in World War II in the Army Air Corps, coming home for visits.

Born in 1930 and raised in Montclair, New Jersey, I finished high school there. Aviation was pretty much in the family. When I was all of two years of age, my dad took me on my first flight, the two of us winging our way from Newark down to Miami to visit relatives. My aunt, in fact, was a stewardess for Eastern Airlines. The Lockheed Vega single-engine plane that I flew in was trimmed in red paint to look like an eagle. How could I have grasped then as a child that decades later I would find myself strapped inside a very different breed of flying machine—Apollo 11’s lander, the
Eagle
, en route to the moon’s Sea of Tranquillity?

Aldrin family holiday card signed by all, including “Buzzer”

(
Illustration Credit 1.2
)

The heritage that led me into aviation and the appreciation for higher education came from my father. Dad had gone to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. His physics professor was Robert Goddard, regarded as the father of liquid-fueled rocketry.

After graduation from high school, I became a cadet at West Point and took to heart its motto, “Duty, Honor, Country.” It’s a maxim that remains part of me today. Surrounded by the influence of aviation, I entered the U.S. Air Force after graduating from the Military Academy. After fighter pilot training I was stationed in Korea, where I flew 66 combat missions in my F-86 Sabre fighter jet, shooting down two enemy MiG-15 aircraft.

Following the Korean War, I was sent to Germany and was on alert, flying F-100s that carried nuclear weapons. In the late
1950s the Cold War was escalating between the then Soviet Union and the United States. To be sure, tensions were high. While posted in Germany, I learned of the Soviets’ surprising technological feat—the launch of Earth’s first artificial satellite in October 1957, a 184-pound sphere called Sputnik. As the import of Sputnik sank in, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the political and public reaction spurred on the space age. It became the starting gun for the space race, leading to the creation of NASA the following year.

Buzz climbs into his F-86 Sabre Jet in Korea, circa 1952
.

(
Illustration Credit 1.3
)

The Soviet Union achieved yet another triumph on April 12, 1961, by sending the first human into Earth orbit, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. As a comparative note, a few weeks after Gagarin’s mission of 108 minutes duration, NASA flew on May 5 America’s first Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a 15-minute suborbital flight that touched the edge of space.

A mere 20 days after Shepard’s mission, President John F. Kennedy boldly challenged America to commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of that decade. Many of those at the helm of a newly formed NASA thought the challenge to be impossible. The know-how just wasn’t there. The nation had little more than 15 minutes of spaceflight experience under its belt.

But what America
did
have was a President with vision, determination, and the confidence that such a goal was attainable. By publicly stating our goal and by establishing an explicit time period on a very clear accomplishment, President Kennedy offered no back door. We either had to do it or not make the grade … and no one was interested in failing. Even then, failure was not an option.

Kennedy’s audacious objective was further reinforced by his speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962. That seminal speech included the famed line: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” That presentation, even today, remains riveting.

Kennedy’s empowering words from over 50 years ago are worth recalling in terms of the technical challenges we face today.

In part, he said,

If space was going to be our next new frontier, then I wanted to be part of getting there. After completing my tour of duty
in Germany, I decided to continue my education and receive my doctorate of science in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT was the same university my father had gone to. For my thesis, “Guidance for Manned Orbital Rendezvous,” I adapted my experience as a fighter pilot intercepting enemy aircraft to develop a technique for two piloted spacecraft to meet in space. I dedicated that final paper to the American astronauts.

Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin makes headlines
.

(
Illustration Credit 1.4
)

First American into space: Alan Shepard, May 1961

(
Illustration Credit 1.5
)

The first time I filled out the forms to be a NASA astronaut, my application was turned down. I was not a test pilot. Determined to seek a career as an astronaut, I applied again. This time, my jet fighter experience and NASA’s interest in my concept for space rendezvous influenced them to accept me in the third group of astronauts in October 1963. I became known to my astronaut peers as “Dr. Rendezvous.”

In reacting to President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by decade’s end, there were many alternatives discussed as to how we could get there and return to Earth. A very gifted NASA engineer, John Houbolt, trumped even the revered U.S. space program leader, Wernher von Braun, who favored a huge monstrous rocket, a multipurpose spacecraft, and direct flight to get to the moon and back.

Houbolt backed a lunar-orbit rendezvous plan. It called for not a multipurpose crew vehicle architecture but a segmented way to achieve the moon landing feat. When the Apollo moon landing method was finally scripted, it adopted segmentation of the mission: using an Apollo command module as discreet from the service module, and segmenting the lunar ascent stage from the lunar descent stage.

Houbolt’s master plan became a plus for me in terms of my MIT rendezvous work. The critical key to this approach would be our ability to reliably rendezvous two spacecraft in orbit around the moon, a very dangerous maneuver. For if that rendezvous failed, there would be no way to rescue the astronauts. Luckily, my MIT expertise was exactly what was required.

It’s essential to note the insertion of the Gemini program. It was a fundamental stepping-stone, a bridge between the one-man Mercury and three-person Apollo programs, primarily to test equipment, to do trial runs of rendezvous and docking scenarios in Earth orbit, and to train astronauts and ground crews for future Apollo missions.

On November 11, 1966, I made my first spaceflight as pilot of Gemini 12, alongside James Lovell, the mission command pilot. That nearly four-day flight brought the Gemini program of ten piloted missions to a successful close. During the flight, I was able to establish a new record for spacewalking, spending five and a half hours outside the spacecraft. To be honest, up to that point, we had failed miserably in the Gemini program to show that an astronaut could easily and effectively work outside his space vehicle. We used microgravity training in parabolic flights of airplanes, but that didn’t solve the Gemini spacewalking problems at all. It took underwater training that I introduced, later to become a fixture in simulating extravehicular activity (EVA) here on Earth in special underwater buoyancy facilities. Thanks to underwater training, and the use of appropriate restraints, I chalked up my successful EVA without taxing my space suit.

During my Gemini 12 tethered space walk, I photographed star fields, retrieved a micrometeorite collector, and did other
work. And there were a few lighter moments. Once in orbit, I just couldn’t wait to get into my personal preference kit and get my small slide rule out and have it float there in front of me. Being a pipe smoker at the time, I also brought my pipe along, putting it in my mouth (unlighted, of course!), with Lovell taking a picture of that episode.