Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [124]
“Imagine having space-based solar energy assets and space-based resources that truly keep this planet pollution-free and make budget deficits literally unthinkable by their sheer richness,” I said slowly, looking from committee member to committee member as I spoke.
That’s what awaits us if we make the right investments. The future I allude to has yet to be built. But all this is not fiction. It’s very close to being fact. A clean, green, non-polluted Earth drawing on abundant space-tapped energy from our sun, passenger travel to and from space for commercial and adventure activity, the step-by-step advance to Mars, even low-cost cycling missions to and from that planet and then beyond. All these goals are worth pursuing and well within our grasp. Once more, they will reenergize this nation, and, if Apollo is any example, spur rippling economic growth.
I knew that my points were being well received, and even the committee members were getting excited. I wanted to lay out their role in my vision for them.
You know the Apollo program’s miraculous achievements were built on a dream by this nation’s leaders and our people. Let us take stock of ourselves and our place in the history of mankind. And let us not be timid or content to rest on our laurels. Already a generation has passed since we walked on the moon. I will say it again, and pray, as I did when we sat on the moon, that we can start this engine.
I knew that time was limited and I needed to bring my remarks to a close, but I wanted the committee members to realize that we were not merely talking about energizing our economy or kicking up some more dust on another celestial body. No, these ideas were much bigger than that. So I made an impassioned plea:
The one argument that I feel is most compelling is, the mission is larger than ourselves. We were called together as a nation and as a species by the Apollo missions to the moon. And there is simply no measure of the good that these explorations brought to us all, not least by bringing the global community closer together.
I closed my statement by issuing a final word of inspiration: “As I like to say with my feet firmly on the ground, on Earth today, as surely as they were on the moon nearly thirty years ago, let’s join together and shoot for the stars, ad astra.”
For a moment I thought the committee was going to give me a standing ovation. They didn’t, but they were obviously moved by my presentation, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was done. But I wasn’t going anywhere just yet. The congressmen had questions for me. I answered them as straightforwardly as possible, continuing to lay out the vision for America’s getting back into space in a big way.
After a while, the committee chairman, Dennis Hastert, started to pull the meeting to a close. “First of all, Dr. Aldrin, let me just say that this is an interesting hearing we’re having. Usually we’re looking into the problems in government and somebody breaking the laws and where dollars are misspent and all these types of things. In a sense, you bring us today some vision that we don’t usually get to look at and … as a backdrop for where we go in the future, as politicians and members of Congress and just the nature of our work, we don’t do the vision thing enough.”
Several other congressmen had more questions for me, and Chairman Hastert did not seem to be in any hurry to get me out of the hot seat. The questions naturally turned to what value there would be in going to Mars. I had been thinking of my answer for nearly twenty years. “Let’s look briefly at the value of going to the moon,” I began.
In the last twenty-seven years, one thing has stood out that, as I meet people, they want me to know where they were when we were on the moon, and they remember vividly that particular day. They are almost obsessed to come up and tell me where they were. And I am trying to understand what that means. I am convinced that what