Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [126]
EARLY IN 1998, the news was released that Senator John Glenn would be returning to space as a passenger aboard the space shuttle. I thought that was fantastic. John was a wonderful candidate for “civilian space travel” since he had such high visibility and he was still in great physical shape. Of course, it was not lost on the public that John was also the first American astronaut to have orbited the Earth. John flew on the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule on February 20, 1962. The mission lasted a mere five hours, and Glenn was strapped to his seat the entire time, never experiencing weightlessness. For him to get a second chance to orbit the Earth at seventy-seven years of age was a great coup for civilian space travel.
On October 29, 1998, Lois and I traveled to Titusville, Florida, to attend the launch of the space shuttle Discovery on which John Glenn was a nonpaying passenger. A crowd of more than 200,000 people— more than usual, these days—had gathered to view the spacecraft attached to the giant rocket booster rumble off the launch pad. It felt almost like a party atmosphere as Lois and I watched along with other celebrity onlookers, including President Bill Clinton and the First Lady; a number of U.S. senators; baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams; Hollywood entertainers Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and Ron Howard; and musician Jimmy Buffett. With a deep roar that practically shook the ground three miles away, and a billowing cloud of fire and smoke, Discovery slowly inched off the ground, headed into the perfectly clear blue sky.
The press was quick to point out that John’s journey was the most elaborate and expensive political junket ever. The mission lasted for nine days, during which time he participated in some experiments designed to ascertain the affects of spaceflight on the elderly, particularly in the areas of equilibrium, muscle loss, and sleep disturbances. John later quipped that he’d wanted to do a spacewalk, but NASA had feared that at his age he might wander off.
While John was still in orbit and the nation followed his progress, I received an invitation to appear on the CBS television program The Late Show with David Letterman. I’ve always enjoyed David’s quirky sort of humor—it reminds me of my own—so I said, “Sure, I’ll be glad to come on.”
It was great fun, and David and I spoke at length about space tourism, and how it is technically feasible and is likely to become a highly profitable business. We talked about some of the new developments under way, and I even told David about my own projects, ShareSpace and my new rocket development company’s StarBooster rockets. It was a great opportunity to pitch the idea of space tourism to a younger audience that would be the primary clientele for future adventures.
David was quite interested in the feasibility of space tourism. “How much will one of those seats cost?” he asked.
“Initially about eighty to one hundred thousand dollars,” I replied, eliciting chuckles from the audience.
“Oooh,” David responded. “But you get complimentary cocktails once you get on board, don’t you?”
That led into a perfect opportunity to tell David and the audience about ShareSpace, and my plan to get the private sector into space. I had been on David’s show several times before, most notably prior to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. David loved to introduce me as the first guy named Buzz to walk on the moon. His rapier wit was always only a second away, but he really did get it whenever I began describing space tourism,