On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two humans to land on the moon as an estimated 600 million people — the largest television audience in history — watched in awe. They spent 15 hours on the lunar surface — including nearly 2 1/2 hours outside the lunar module — and returned with 46 pounds of moon rocks. Aldrin, now 79, recently talked about the moon landing with Sentinel Space Editor Robert Block. This is an edited transcript:
Take us through the mission. You had flown [in space] before, but was this somehow different?It was a wondrous opportunity to be part of something historical. We just had a hard time comprehending what it would mean to other people, what it would mean to ourselves.
One of the things that people remember about the landing is the problems during the lunar module's descent. The autopilot appeared to have failed, so Neil Armstrong took the helm and you called out information from the gauges. What were you thinking?We were very busy. We were both kind of distracted with all the program alarms coming on in the cockpit. Neil didn't like where we were headed and looked very conservatively for the very smoothest spot ... but we flew over the top of where we were supposed to be. With 60 seconds of fuel left, it was a little nip and tuck in my mind, but I didn't want to disturb his concentration.
About half a minute later, with 30 seconds [of fuel remaining] and 10 feet [of altitude] it looked like we had it made.
So, you knew how low you were on fuel?Oh yeah.
After you returned, you told people that you took Communion [the Christian sacrament] on the moon surface. Did you administer it yourself? And why did you not tell anybody at the time?Because Deke [Slayton, NASA's chief astronaut] told me not to. He was aware of all things being packed on board the spacecraft, and I was just kind of telling him, and he said don't talk about it [because NASA was fighting a lawsuit demanding that astronauts refrain from religious activities while in space]. It was momentarily a little jolt to my ego, but in retrospect was absolutely correct. I would have felt out of place if I had done something that had so limited our mission's scope as to be a narrow part of humanity when we came in peace for all mankind. So I administered it to myself in the lunar module.
After you came back you said, "I felt like we were not alone ... I had the impression of being on center stage."We were on show.
There was nobody around for hundreds of thousands of miles. But there was a camera and voice communications and many millions of people watching. You're on stage, but it's a very unusual stage. In a way, it was funny.
You know comedy is contrasting the absurd with the normal. When we were getting ready to leave the moon, Houston said, "Apollo 11, you're cleared for liftoff." And I was supposed to say, "Houston, roger, we're number one on the runway."
I gave that a little bit of thought and said, "Am I really going to utter that foolish a statement to make light of the seriousness of our liftoff from the moon?" There was no one else up there, and there wasn't a runway either. But I decided, "Yeah, yeah I'll say that. It's part of the show."
Then when we returned, we saw the reaction of the people. And I said to Neil, "We missed the whole thing." We didn't share the moment of exhilaration here on Earth.
It was like we were out of town doing something else.
Now it's 40 years, and NASA plans to go back. Should we go back? What do you see are the benefits?Sure, we could go back. But is that the best thing we could do? If we go back, we open up much lesser achievements than our first landing on the moon and then re-landing on the moon. Why would we want to do that?
Other nations appear to want to go to the moon for the first time. Couldn't we do other things while we help them achieve what we already have and satisfy their objectives? We can tag along and do a lot of robotics while working on bigger plans.
International cooperation to the moon could help defray the costs of doing those things. And while other nations go to the moon with our help, we could chart a course of long-duration spaceflight and life-support systems. All the things that need to be developed to be a true space-faring nation. We can establish refueling depots in low Earth orbit. We can put exploration modules out further into space. Why not fly by a comet on a one-year mission with an exploration module? Shouldn't we reach out and figure out how to explore our solar system with human beings? The leader who charts that course will be respected far more than [one] trying to race back to the moon.
I would never stoop to call kicking up dust on the moon a stunt, but it certainly wasn't a pioneering effort that led to sustainment. We knew we couldn't sustain that. The benefit we got out of going to the moon 40 years ago is that we helped to end the Cold War.
We also found out how the moon got there and discovered what you could do with the right teamwork and management. It was well worth the effort.
But to try to do the same thing now with footprints and flags on Mars, to send humans there and bring them back, and do it again and bring them back, Congress will cancel the program all over again. If we stay the course that we are on now, we can't do any of the things I am talking about.
Robert Block can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org or 321-639-0522.