Magnificent Desolation

by Buzz Aldrin

  Lois didn’t really want me to drive in the race, because it was not a staged event; it was a real speed race and it was dangerous. The race circuit was nearly two miles long, winding through the streets surrounding the Long Beach Convention Center. On the straight stretches, a driver could reach speeds of close to 100 miles per hour. But the course is especially noted for its last section, in which it runs through a dangerous hairpin turn followed by a slightly curved section that follows the length of the Long Beach waterfront and is lined with palm trees, making for quite a challenging and scenic track. More than 200,000 race fans turn out annually for a weekend of racing, food, and music. Professional drivers who have won the Toyota Grand Prix include Mario Andretti and Al Unser Jr. Past celebrity participants have included Hollywood actors and actresses such as Cameron Diaz, Queen Latifah, Gene Hackman, William Shatner, Dennis Franz, Tony Danza, and Kim Alexis, and athletes such as Bruce Jenner, Lynn Swann, Walter Payton, Mary Lou Retton, Joe Montana, and rocker Ted Nugent.

  For two weekends prior to the race, the celebrity drivers practiced on a makeshift track out in the Mojave Desert. The sponsors always invited both male and female celebrities to race, so it was quite a rowdy bunch. It was fun to hook up again with Olympic skiing gold medalist, Picabo Street, whom Lois and I had come to know in Sun Valley, Idaho, and whom I saw at a number of ski celebrity events. For the Toyota race, professional drivers Shawna Robinson and Jeremy McGrath, as well as actor Josh Brolin, were breathing down our necks. It was an exhilarating but humbling experience; it had been a long time since I’d driven a car with a manual transmission. My eye-hand coordination wasn’t quite as quick as when I was flying fighter jets in Korea, so almost every day during our test runs, I crashed a car into the wall. Comedian Adam Carolla loved making fun of me for my crashes. “Buzz’s best friend is the wall,” Adam joked.

  During the actual race, I was doing great and holding my own until nearly the end, when swimsuit model and actress Angie Everhart crashed into me and knocked me into the wall and out of the race. Afterwards, Angie came over to me and got down on her knees, begging my forgiveness. “Oh, Buzz, I’m so sorry. Please, I’ll do anything to make it up to you!” I just smiled as the photographers flashed pictures of us. Peter Reckell, star of the daytime television series, Days of Our Lives, was the celebrity winner and Jeremy McGrath the pro winner.

  ON DECEMBER 17, 2003, Lois and I traveled to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for the nation’s celebration of the “Centennial of Flight”— one hundred years to the day since Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully got their 1903 Wright Flyer off the ground and into the air. But unlike their “first in flight” day, this December 17 was pouring buckets. In spite of it, the crowds still gathered, huddled together under tarps for the beautifully staged ceremony in honor of the first powered flight. President Bush came from Washington, D.C., to speak to the crowd. Our friend John Travolta served as master of ceremonies for the morning events, and I delivered the formal prayer at the opening. The security guards held an umbrella over my head as I went up to the podium. I decided on this occasion to share the words that had helped me through so much of my life over the last twenty-five years:

  “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

  It was a sentiment I thought we would all do well to remember, having come so far from the first powered flight and in the context of looking to our future challenges in space.

  As the rain abated, the celebration was honored by a 100-plane flyby spaced throughout the day. All sorts of dignitaries, celebrities, and aviation legends were on hand to commemorate this occasion, including Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, as well as Neil Armstrong and Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford. One of the highlights for me was being named as one of the top 100 aviators in history. Somewhere, I hoped my father was smiling.

  The celebration culminated with a re-creation of the Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air powered flight, which took off at precisely 10:35 a.m. and lasted twelve seconds, covering a mere 120 feet. Think about that—only twelve seconds in flight, but they were twelve seconds that changed the world. Naturally, I couldn’t help but think how far we had come—from Kitty Hawk to the moon in sixty-six years— and how far I dreamed of going.

  To that end, the very next day after the Centennial of Flight, our ShareSpace Foundation held a one-day symposium to usher in the next century of flight. We called it “Next Century of Flight Space Imperatives,” held at the Ronald Reagan Center in Washington, D.C. Our goal was to inspire a new vision for America’s space exploration program. With a small, overworked staff, we secured sponsorships from Boeing, Lockheed, American Airlines, and others. We partnered with Aviation Week (publisher of the magazine of the same name) to host the conference, which also included an elegant gala affair the night of December 17 at the National Air and Space Museum. The conference took six months to put together, and was attended by numerous movers and shakers in the space and aviation world, including Senator E. J. “Jake” Garn, a former U.S. senator from Utah, who had been the first member of Congress to fly on the space shuttle; the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the world-famous Hayden Planetarium in New York; Elon Musk, cofounder of PayPal, now turned aerospace entrepreneur with his space transportation startup, SpaceX; and no fewer than five of my fellow Apollo astronauts.

  “To me, this is a culmination and a beginning,” I said in my opening remarks. “It’s the culmination of many years, months, weeks of efforts that I’ve attempted to put into building a coalition, to building a consensus. United we stand. Divided we kinda circle the wagons and shoot inward instead of accomplishing what we’re after.”

  I was convinced that at this juncture in history, America was lost in space. I hoped that through the symposium we could stimulate some ideas. “We have to push forward,” I told everyone I met. “We’ve got to set out a new vision for our country’s space program.” NASA didn’t seem to have a clear goal or vision. Moreover, the Chinese had just entered the space picture in October, becoming only the third nation in the world to launch humans into space—taikonauts, they dubbed them—as well as a satellite and probes to the moon, with plans for future probes to Mars. There was some concern that we might be on the verge of new space race in which we were handicapped by the upcoming retirement of the shuttle and the lack of a clear objective.

  The futurist Alvin Toffler, whose once-controversial book Future Shock now reads like history, spoke at the conference and encouraged us to look forward to even more astounding developments in flight over the next hundred years. That set the tone, and by the end of the day, our hopes were soaring. The symposium might not have changed the world overnight to get our space program back on track for the next 100 years, but it was a productive exchange of forward-thinking ideas. Best of all, a few weeks later, on January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush announced a renewed “Vision for Space Exploration,” a fresh agenda for NASA and others related to America’s space program, with a goal of returning to the moon to set up permanent lunar bases, and then to initiate human exploration of Mars and beyond. It appeared at the time that the “moon, Mars, and beyond” statement would marshal the nation in a new concerted effort. I’d like to think our symposium lent some extra impetus to that decision.

  I smiled as I read about the President’s initiatives. I had much I wanted to accomplish, and the announcement by the President of the United States gave me hope that my dreams could yet come true within my lifetime.

  15 Jordan Kare, “Fire in the Sky,” © Jordan T. Kare, Seattle, WA, 1981, 1986; used by permission.

  21

  WEIGHTLESS

  AGAIN

  IN 2004, ZERO-GRAVITY FLIGHTS BECAME AVAILABLE COMmercially in the United States for the first time. Prior to that, the only place the average American citizen could experience a zero-gravity flight was by flying with the Russians. Occasionally NASA extended zero-gravity flight pri
vileges for educational purposes, or for unusual requests by Hollywood filmmakers for scenes in space, such as the scenes inside the capsule for the movie Apollo 13. Now anyone who is healthy, and a bit wealthy, can enjoy a zero-gravity experience at a cost of about $3,500 per person. Of course, if you are really wealthy, you can rent the entire plane for your family reunion or company retreat.

  During my astronaut training in preparation for my first mission on Gemini 12, we affectionately referred to the plane in which we performed our weightless training as the “vomit comet.” Actually it was a hollowed-out, fully padded Air Force KC-135, the military version of a Boeing 707 jet, that pulled about two g’s each time it flew up in a steep angle into the atmosphere, where it would linger for about forty seconds before pulling another two g’s when we came down. At the top of these parabolic maneuvers, I floated free in a weightless world. Impervious to the Earth’s gravitational force, I traversed the mockup of Gemini with its open hatch in a simulation of my upcoming spacewalk. In one of my last zero-gravity training flights, we flew eighty parabolas at once. On rare occasions, a few members of the astronaut corps lost their breakfast. But my inner ear never seemed to fail me or sense the conflict between the g forces and the weightlessness. You might say I have a steady orientation when it comes to up and down.

  When Zero Gravity Corporation commenced a nationwide tour in key cities across the United States to fly its “G Force One” plane and promote this new adventure, the National Space Society (NSS) offered a special deal on discounted tickets to its members for the first of two flights to be launched out of Burbank, California. The NSS is a great grassroots organization for space advocates and enthusiasts, of which I was privileged to serve as chairman for several years in the 1990s. The organization has grown and expanded under the excellent guidance of its young and knowledgeable director, George Whitesides. They asked me to join the flight to publicize the event. I hadn’t been weightless in thirty-five years, so I thought it would be a good chance to brush up on my technique. Lois wasn’t quite up for this adventure, so Lisa came along in hopes that there might be an extra seat available. I also invited along former Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan, though ultimately he couldn’t stay through the delayed takeoff schedule.

  I was asked to offer some words of encouragement to the participants, and share a few thoughts with an ABC newscaster covering the event. As the twenty-five NSS novices went through their brief training session, I could see this was a good first step toward exposing the public at large to the adventure of space travel. Their eyes lit up with excitement and a sense of anticipation as I shared with them a bit of my ShareSpace philosophy:

  The phrase “tourism in space” is no longer the giggle that it was about ten years ago. And I can say that not only do I want to be alive to see humans walk on the moon again, but I also want to be alive to see things like lotteries selecting people to go into space. My interest, eventually, is orbital travel, and I know that the interim step is suborbital activities, and I applaud all the efforts that are being done on that behalf. I want to accelerate the movement from suborbital flight to orbital as soon as I can. That’s very difficult to do. And only governments have been able to do that so far, so it’s quite a challenge to get the private sector and the entrepreneurs somehow to do what until now only governments with a lot of money have been able to do. We need to open it up to a vast increase, and that’s why I think the use of sponsors that are involved in supporting this activity can also be instrumental in helping to select the participants who get involved in it.

  It was time for the flight. All the participants and I donned our blue flight suits, provided by Zero Gravity, and accented with sponsor Diet Rite space patches on the pockets. Buckled into a few seats in the back of the specially modified and padded Boeing 727 plane during takeoff, we soon unstrapped as the plane rose to a sufficient elevation to begin its parabolas. The pilot would fly about ten of these maneuvers—a far cry from the eighty I once endured in my training—but probably more than enough for newcomers. The participants would experience parabolas that produced a Mars gravity (one-third Earth gravity) environment, then a lunar gravity (one-sixth Earth gravity) environment, and then complete zero-gravity weightlessness. On the mark, the zero-g guides gave us a countdown as we approached each twenty-five-second period of weightlessness, and issued a warning as we were about to come out and hit the g forces.

  “Three. Two. One. Get ready for lunar gravity!”

  In pure delight, the participants, guides, and I suddenly found ourselves lighter than air. For me it was like riding a bicycle, but this time it was purely for fun rather than training on equipment in bulky space-suits. For the NSS participants, it was a brand-new sensation as they pushed off from the floor, glided and wafted in a freer movement than they had ever felt before. It was less than a minute, but felt like forever, until the warning for pull-out came and we all assumed our stationary positions lying on the floor on our backs to evenly distribute the g’s, making each of us feel twice as heavy as our real weight.

  By the time we got to zero-gravity, I was having the time of my life, somersaulting with ease, propelling through the air like Superman, and giving the ABC newscaster some great sound bites. But the interview questions didn’t last long, since the brave female reporter found herself succumbing to the effects of nausea. Of course each flight suit came equipped with a little plastic bag for that purpose.

  About one hour and ten parabolas later, we landed on the tarmac. All the participants, even the reporter, were now officially initiated zero-g flyers, and each was presented with a certificate of weightless flight. The next group for the second flight was in training, being prepped for their first experience.

  “Hey, Buzz!”

  I heard my name being called out by one of the Zero G marketing guys. He took me aside to say, “We’ve got a bit of a problem. All the footage ABC shot of you on the flight didn’t turn out because the camera wasn’t working properly. Would you be willing to go up again on the second flight?”

  “Why not?” I said. “But this time I want Lisa to join me.”

  Lisa had a blast, doing all kinds of cheerleader gymnastics from her youth, and learning pretty quickly some of the acrobatic movements I was showing her. We somersaulted together, cartwheeled in pairs, and even pulled off a human windmill with each of our hands stretched upward and out, spinning as we held on to each other’s ankles. She had no side effects, though she may have overdone it for her first time, admitting that if the pilot had performed an eleventh parabola, she might have lost it. As for me, the second flight was even more fun than the first. My seventy-four-year-old body felt thirty-nine again!

  Since those two flights venturing into weightlessness, I have participated in several others—most recently at seventy-eight years of age— to help promote the experience to the public, and as the featured Apollo astronaut on the “Platinum Zero G Experience” for Zero Gravity Corporation in flights out of the Kennedy Space Center and Las Vegas. It has been a real thrill to see the enthusiasm with which the participants have embraced the experience, and I recommend it highly. Just make sure you eat a light meal before you go!

  I WAS HOME in Los Angeles when Burt Rutan, founder of the aerospace development company Scaled Composites, called and invited me out to the Mojave Desert. He was about to have another of his test flights of a new suborbital spacecraft he was developing. I had been out a few times earlier during the development phase, and had enjoyed seeing the progress he was making with the unique winglet design. His approach to liftoff was also unique. The suborbital craft would not be launched vertically or horizontally on its own, but would be carried under the belly of a larger, broad-winged, jet-powered carrier airplane called the White Knight. At an altitude of about ten miles, the suborbital craft, christened SpaceShipOne, would separate from the White Knight and fire its rockets to continue another fifty-two miles upward and reach the sixty-two-mile mark where the blackness of space begins and the curvature of
the Earth is clearly visible, and the pilot would experience weightlessness for about five minutes before reentry.

  On the day that I joined Burt to watch the test, a large crowd was expected, including media, since SpaceShipOne was a key contender for the $10-million award being offered by the X PRIZE Foundation for the first privately developed craft to be piloted on two consecutive suborbital flights within a two-week period. In creating the prize, the foundation took a cue from the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 award created in 1919 by the New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig, to the first aviator to fly nonstop between New York City and Paris. For nearly eight years nobody claimed Orteig’s prize, but then, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh won it in the Spirit of St. Louis. To stimulate competition, ingenuity, and innovation in the fledgling space tourism industry, the $10-million X PRIZE offered a huge incentive. More than a dozen companies worldwide took the challenge seriously.

  Backed by financier and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Burt’s efforts were looking very promising for winning the prize. But on this occasion they still had a few kinks to work out. As a crowd of hundreds gathered in the area surrounding the hot desert landing strip, we all gazed up as the graceful White Knight took flight with SpaceShipOne fastened securely to its fuselage. After separation, Mike Melvill, the sixty-three-year-old test pilot, continued speeding upward, followed by a thick white contrail that made it easier to be tracked by the naked eye. Suddenly the spacecraft went out of control into a roll, as the contrail now turned into a series of curlicues. With a great deal of skill, and a bit of luck, Mike was able to keep the roll symmetrical until the rocket burned out, and then fully regained control to make it back for a successful and safe landing. Averting a potential disaster, both he and the craft escaped injury.