Buzz Aldrin

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The future is about wings and wheels and new forms of space transportation, along with our deep-space ambition to set foot on another world in our solar system: Mars. I firmly believe we will establish permanence on that planet. And in reaching for that goal, we can cultivate commercial development of the moon, the asteroid belt, the Red Planet itself and beyond.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Believe
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As time goes by, I'm increasingly impressed by how very special and timely it was that we got the degree of national commitment needed to put people on the Moon. For the first time, this nation was united in trying to develop an interplanetary capability. We've been trying to repeat that situation ever since.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Commitment
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Mars could very well be a staging location for the resources of the asteroid belt. We have to learn how to get a payback somewhere, but it's beyond Mars that the real payoff will come from minerals.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Real
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The honor you have given us goes not to us as a crew, but to ... all Americans, who believed, who persevered with us. What Apollo has begun we hope will spread out in many directions, not just in space, but underneath the seas, and in the cities to tell us unforgettably what we will and must do. There are footprints on the moon. Those footprints belong to each and every one of you, to all mankind. They are there because of the blood, sweat, and tears of millions of people. Those footprints are the symbol of true human spirit.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Perseverance
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Standing on the Moon looking back at Earth - this lovely place you just came from - you see all the colours, and you know what they represent. Having left the water planet, with all that water brings to Earth in terms of colour and abudance life, the absence of water and atmosphere on the desolate surface of the Moon gives rise to a stark contrast.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
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It was challenging to understand what was necessary to successfully carry out all the training simulations that we, as crewmen, would experience, and make a very successful use of that training and education.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Successful
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For a million dollars, the Russians would take two people, a million apiece, around the moon and back. However, stories, videos that come from the space station, and other people, are a great inspiration to young people for an exciting career field.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Inspiration
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Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
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I was not the commander, I was a junior person, so once both were outside, I followed my leader, because we (NASA) had not put together detailed jobs of people outside. I believe it could have been improved. But it was very successful for what it was.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Jobs
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At 10,000 feet, the 3 parachutes would come out, a little lower the pressure of the atmosphere outside was greater than inside, and we could smell the salt air and it was very encouraging to return to earth.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Air
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I felt pretty confident in relieving myself, since I had the urge.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Felt
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I have no doubt that humans will go to Mars. And I feel that America has led so many things in space - we have invested so much, and we have a lot to gain - that America could and should be the nation that should lead the settlement of Mars.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: America
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Six out of seven times we landed successfully [on the Moon]. I wanted to be a part of that and I was a part of that, so my personal feeling is of great gratefulness for having somehow been in a position to have been given the opportunity to be on that first landing. That's a marvelous experience for a little kid that grew up in New Jersey. So I'm very thankful, and I asked the whole world to give thanks once we successfully landed.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Kids
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It's not easy to get human beings into orbit. So far only three nations have been able to do that, with all the resources that they put together. And I'm just a little skeptical that that's going to be done by the private sector without making use of what has been done by the government.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Government
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As a youngster, I read of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. As a student, I wrote English reports on science fiction. And as a fighter pilot, I observed the selection of the Mercury astronauts. All this was fascinating, but I really didn't think I would ever be a part of it. It was only when my good friend Ed White was selected as a Gemini astronaut that I decided to join NASA as part of the Apollo program.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Good Friend
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The government needs a role in carrying out exploration. They will be leading the development of the engines that are needed, and the private sector will take advantage of those.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Government
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If you want to say that the sky is black, and if I'm there, even if I fall back down again, I will be weightless for a period of time - maybe that's the definition of space.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Fall
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My family has always supported my activities, whether it was doing combat in Korea, flying progressively and challenging fighter-jet aircraft in Europe, or studying for a doctor's degree at MIT. They have been always very supportive and understanding of the challenges and risks involved in my career. A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Team
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There's a tremendously satisfying freedom associated with weightlessness. It's challenging in the absence of traction or leverage, and it requires thoughtful readjustment. I found the experience of weightlessness to be one of the most fun and enjoyable, challenging and rewarding, experiences of spaceflight. Returning to Earth brings with it a great sense of heaviness, and a need for careful movement. In some ways it's not too different from returning from a rocking ocean ship.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Fun
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We really didn't devote a lot of time to investigating the scariest aspects of our flight. It was more challenging and productive to concentrate on the remedies, and leave things that couldn't be solved to happen without thinking about them. There is a morbid human curiosity associated with tragic death-producing events. Though naturally, this needs to be kept in perspective.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Thinking
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Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there. For me, a flight in a shuttle, though most satisfying, would be anticlimactic after my flight to the moon. Plus, if I pursued a flight myself, people would think that was the reason I am trying to generate interest in public spaceflight. And that's not the purpose - I want to generate interest in long-range space exploration.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
Image of Buzz Aldrin
On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us. It was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moving
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Dwelling on an engine failure for a pilot as he rolls down the runway is NOT what he should be thinking about - it's obtaining a smooth liftoff! But in the back of his mind, he knows exactly what to do (or pretty much) and in many cases, if he's alone in the fighter aircraft, he has to leave that aircraft in an ejection seat in a big hurry!
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Thinking
Image of Buzz Aldrin
I'm sure the most favorite airplane in my career would still be the Sabre F86 cleft wing , which allowed me to be credited with 2 Russian-built Mig-15 destroyed during the Korean War. Where I was in 1953.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: War
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Unless we are able to commit to a permanent growing settlement [on Mars], then I don't think just going there with humans and coming back is worth doing. The expense of planning to come back is like the people who left Europe to come to America and then to turn around and go back to Europe, it really doesn't make any sense at all.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Thinking
Image of Buzz Aldrin
There are a lot of people that get interested in something, and they hear about it, and they read about it, and then they watch it happen, and that's why I had quite an interest in the lottery because you'd interest a lot of people, and then just a few would win a chance to do something.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Winning
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We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Space
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As we begin to have landings on the moon, we can alternate those with vertical launch of similar crew modules on similar launch vehicles for vertical-launch tourism in space, if you want to call it that adventure travel.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Adventure
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We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they're going to say 'Who put that there? Who put that there?' The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
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The energy varies with the square of the velocity, so if you need five times the velocity, that's 25 times the energy.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Squares
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I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies -- NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science -- but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Real
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I think the public needs to be reminded just how much inspiration and intention was given throughout the world to be bold, to send human beings to the moon in the '60s and the '70s. It's important now to bring together the nations that weren't able to do it then and help them do it. We need to move forward.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Inspiration
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I think the American Dream used to be achieving one's goals in your field of choice-and from that all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow. We've become more materialistic. For balance, I think we need to get back to idealism and patriotism, but also be realistic with our monetary goals.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Dream
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The feeling of reduced gravity and the limitations of the space suit resulted in a slow-motion movement. Perhaps not too far from a trampoline, but without the springiness and instability.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Space
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We have the ability, at such high fidelity, to simulate the physical world through computers. But when the spiritual world or human behavior comes into play, we don't have a very good model for that at all.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Spiritual
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The view from space is like having a globe on your desk -- it's a broadening experience.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Views
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To appropriately respond to an emergency requires a very clear mind, to cooly analyze what the observations are and how to fix it.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Mind
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History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Stories
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Not everyone can be an astronaut and go into space, some people with sufficient resources can purchase and fly sub-orbitally thanks to various companies and for more money (considerably) fly into orbit.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Space
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We'll get to the details of what's around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape - angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock.... The colors - well.... There doesn't appear to be too much of a general color at all; however, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders are going to have some interesting colors to them. Over.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Rocks
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It was designed to have an impact on the stalemate over Mutually Assured Destruction with the Soviet Union. 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.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Memories
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What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
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Only a large-volume market like space travel can attack the barrier of high costs.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Space
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I was saddened to learn of the passing of Leonard Nimoy, a fellow space traveler because he helped make the journey into the final frontier accessible to us all.... Indeed, there are strange new worlds to explore -- to seek out new life and start new civilizations. It is time to boldly go where no man -- or woman -- has gone before. Thanks to Leonard Nimoy and his beloved Mr. Spock, the bar has been set high for us to continue humanity's quest to probe outward in the universe.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Journey
Image of Buzz Aldrin
Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return trip? They came here to settle. And that's what we should be doing on Mars. 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.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Rocks
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From the distance of the moon, Earth was four times the size of a full moon seen from Earth. It was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Distance
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There's no doubt that there will be many trials and tribulations along the way in taming space for the benefit of all, unmasking its truths and using the boundless resources available to us. Taking a chance allows us to seek new horizons -- and we all benefit from being horizon hunters.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Space
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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.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Moon
Image of Buzz Aldrin
I was lucky enough to have been born on this planet earth, in this admirable country of the United States of America.
- Buzz Aldrin
Collection: Country