Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [125]
More nods from the committee members kept me going.
It’s not the value of the rocks that we brought back, or the great poetic statements that we all uttered. Those things aren’t remembered. It’s that people witnessed that event.
We are not going to justify going to Mars by what we bring back. Whether there is life or not shouldn’t be a determining factor in whether we go to Mars. We are going to make a commitment and carry that out.
And what is that commitment going to do to this world today that is so focused on the immediate payoff—the attitude of “What’s in it for me right now?” Everything around us, fed by the communications industry, focuses on fixing today, and it doesn’t focus on where we are going to be in the next twenty to fifty years. We need something that draws away from today, and internationally supporting a thriving settlement on Mars and all the benefits that it is going to bring back here on Earth, and the feel-good attitude that people are going to have, that’s going to be the value of going to Mars.
I took a breather as Congressman Jim Turner jumped into the conversation. “It is exciting just to listen to you speak,” he said to me. “I guess as I listen to you lay out your vision, Dr. Aldrin, it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to figure out a way to get that common commitment.”
I thought I knew where the congressman was going, so I followed his lead, and said:
People want to journey into space; they want to share that participation. Just ask them. I go around and they want to know when they can get into space. And it is doable. The tourism industry worldwide is a multibillion-dollar industry. Let’s just unleash that into space, and not just for the affluent, but with wisely worked-out lottery principles. You can form a corporation and issue shares and distribute the dividends by random selection for thousands of space-related prizes, including a ride into orbit. And that could develop the rocket and the spacecraft systems needed to go to the moon. Not the other way around. We are not going to make a commitment to go to the moon and then use those vehicles for tourism; it should be the other way.
There. I’d done it. I’d actually laid out my ShareSpace concept in front of a congressional committee. Either they’d think I was nuts, or they could recognize that the future was staring them right in the face.
Whether or not Congress got the message, the media certainly did. One newspaper called me “a traveling evangelist for cost-effective manned space travel to Mars and maybe beyond.” The Washington Post said something similar: “Aldrin pitches a space race renaissance. He sounds like a high-tech preacher hustling a mega-billion-dollar gospel of the stars.”
Maybe so. I was glad to point out features of the replica Eagle lunar module used in 1969 and on display at the Air and Space Museum. But my real focus was on the future and convincing people to dream space dreams once again. I did not want “a giant leap for mankind” to be nothing more than a phrase from the past.
In May 1998, I introduced my newly formed nonprofit ShareSpace Foundation to the public in the National Space Society’s magazine, Ad Astra (“to the stars”). I was currently chairing the NSS Board of Directors, and I couldn’t think of a better audience to share the genesis of my hopes for ShareSpace than the space advocates and enthusiasts who comprised the membership of this grassroots organization. I called out for citizen participation in a lottery-type program, where for a nominal price of say, ten dollars, they would gain access to prizes in a range of space-tourism experiences. The purpose of using the lottery approach was to strengthen and accelerate the growth of commercial space, along with furthering opportunities