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“You make up for that and usually that leads to escapism and I certainly suffered from that. “And that’s a bad thing for a guy who has inherited a little bit of depression. "So I made a couple of lousy choices and found that kind of lonely. #NEIL ARMSTRONG BUZZ ALDREN RACE INTO SPACE HOW TO#If you take an inventive hard-driving person and give him nothing to do he won’t be sure how to deal with that. "I was the first astronaut to go back to the military service but that didn’t quite work out and I was left wondering what to do next. “After Nasa the air force welcomed me back into the service. "That was combined maybe with the intensity of the notoriety and then the aftermath of that notoriety and decisions as to what I was going to do next. “I really think that was the result of inherited tendencies which showed up in my mother’s side of the family,” he says. and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.”īut for Buzz, who has been married three times, looking back at the earth from space and being one of the most lauded heroes in history couldn’t stop a descent into depression which led to alcoholism. He radioed: “I would like to request a few moments of silence. While Armstrong is renowned as the first man on the Moon, Aldrin, it is said, became not only the first to urinate on the Moon, inside his specially designed space suit, but also to secretly administer holy communion too. It was then, together with fellow astronaut Michael Collins, that they were summoned to the Nasa director’s office and told to prepare for a Moon landing.Īnd on July 20, 1969,600 million people on Earth watched as the Eagle module landed on the lunar surface. It was an uplifting moment for the nation – 1968 had not been too happy a year with the Vietnam conflict going on.” “So we established an easy working relationship helping the first flight to reach the Moon. “Me and Neil started getting close working together, not on the mission but on the back-up crew. “That was a reaction to what we perceived as a potential threat to our progression of missions by the Russians being able to fly around the Moon and come back. “But then they decided they were going to send it to the Moon in addition to that. “At first they were going to put it on the Saturn V rocket and it would have been the first crewed flight of the Saturn V, which was kind of special. “It was a very bold manoeuvre, it was the second time the Apollo command module ever flew,” he says. ![]() “There was a crew that was going to take Apollo 8 to the Moon. He and Armstrong then became back-up crew for the Apollo 8 mission, the first human-crewed spacecraft to leave Earth’s orbit, travel to the Moon, orbit it and return home. He first left Earth as a pilot on the Gemini 12 mission in 1966 when he carried out one of the very first successful space walks. #NEIL ARMSTRONG BUZZ ALDREN RACE INTO SPACE FULL#He turned down a full scholarship from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take up a place at America’s top military academy, West Point.Īfter training as a pilot he flew 66 combat missions in Korea before being selected by Nasa in 1963. His assistant behind me adds quickly: “He was shocked.” Buzz, 82, nods sagely.īuzz has shown steely determination to succeed, a quality needed when the first forays into space were supported by early computing power which would be eclipsed by the average modern smartphone.Ĭoming from a military family, Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jnr earned the nickname Buzz as a child, when a sibling could only say “buzzer” not “brother” and it stuck. “Don’t you understand fighter pilots don’t feel? We experience, we get mad, we get happy we get joyous but we don’t feel.” When I ask Buzz how it felt, the former pilot, who shot down two Russian-built MIG 15 jets in the Korean War, gives me a mischievous smile. Speaking of the moment he heard Armstrong had died of a heart attack he said: “I was getting ready to get on an airplane when the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation called to let me know” "He was extraordinary in his talents, his reactions and his ability to make judgements.” “Neil wasn’t a person that was a back-slapping easy to get along with kind of guy. “He was an absolutely essential major contributor to the success of the mission. When I ask Buzz, two months after Armstrong’s death, if they were friends, he pauses for a second. And one of the most enduring is that the pair didn’t get along. ![]() Like other incredible feats, many myths have become attached to the Apollo 11 landing. AS the first men to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s act of amazing human endeavour has become the stuff of legend. ![]()
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