Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [89]
SHORTLY AFTER COMPLETING my program at Rutgers, I returned to California to join Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins at a private Apollo 11 tenth anniversary celebration at the home of ex-President Richard Nixon in San Clemente. A few days later I headed back to Washington, D.C., to celebrate NASA’s version of the tenth anniversary of the initial Apollo moon landing. Other than the party at the Nixons’, the tenth anniversary celebration was the first time I had seen Neil or Mike since the fifth anniversary. By July 20, 1979, twenty-four Apollo astronauts had reached the moon, and twelve of us had actually walked on the surface. For the milestone anniversaries of the initial landing, NASA liked to pull all of us back together, and it was always good to see everyone.
Those who attended the anniversary celebration were surprised when I showed up with my former wife, Joan. We were living our separate lives by now, with the only contact between us regarding matters pertaining to our children. I had dated a few women since our divorce, and could no doubt have invited someone to come along to Washington, D.C., but when it came time for the Apollo 11 anniversary, I felt that Joan deserved to be there as much as anybody. For all the sacrifices she made and for the price she paid, she should be able to join in the celebration, too. Besides, she had remained friends with most of the astronauts’ wives, so it would be a special treat for her to be reunited with them.
I was pleased people recognized that Joan and I were still friendly toward one another, that we harbored no resentments or bitterness; several remarked that it was refreshing to see a divorced couple getting along so well. Nevertheless, when anyone noticed the two of us together, I was quick to let them know that we had no intentions of reconciling and remarrying.
A lot had happened in our lives since that warm Florida morning on July 16, 1969, when Neil, Mike, and I had set out from Launch Pad 39-A. Our initial landing and the five additional lunar landings to follow ours—the more scientifically exciting trips in my estimation— yielded an enormous amount of information, but, more important, demonstrated to the world the power of American technology once we set our sights on a goal.
Neil was now an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, as well as a consultant to Chrysler. He still liked to dabble in test flights of business jets occasionally, too. Mike Collins had left NASA shortly after our mission to work for the U.S. State Department. He later moved to the Smithsonian Institution, where he directed the creation of the National Air and Space Museum, one of the most popular exhibits in Washington, D.C. By 1979, Mike was one of the top people at the Smithsonian.
And me? I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. But I smiled nonetheless when someone at the anniversary would come up and say, “Gee, Buzz, you look great. What’s been going on in your life since walking on the moon and experiencing that magnificent desolation?” I had finally come to a great sense of peace in overcoming the struggles I had faced, and the changes I had experienced since Apollo 11.
The space program itself had changed tremendously in a decade. The genius Wernher von Braun, who developed the mighty Saturn V rocket that had lifted us toward the moon, had passed away. Americans had not flown in space for more than four years, and there was some question about when the space shuttle would actually be ready to fly, although NASA hoped that it could make its initial forays