Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [90]
Nevertheless, the festivities in Washington, D.C., were upbeat, warm, and inspiring. President Jimmy Carter honored Neil, Mike, and me at a White House ceremony, followed by a public ceremony on the Mall, where we received a standing ovation from the crowd. In the National Air and Space Museum, we answered the usual questions from the media, including the inevitable “Would you go again?” Neil said that he would take the flight again “in a minute.” Mike Collins said he would go again, too, but then quipped, “But it would take more than a minute to get ready.” When the spotlight fell on me, my mind quickly flashed back through the stress of the world tour, the subsequent mental depression, alcoholism, and the breakup of two marriages in the last decade, and I said, “I’m not sure I would go again.”
In truth, I was more passionate about getting other people into space than going back myself. That was one of the positive aspects I saw in the space shuttle. It held the potential for more than just a few highly trained specialists to travel into space. The shuttle was basically a space truck with a cab that could seat seven and a cargo hold large enough to carry a Greyhound bus and more. The plan was to fly to and from orbit every few weeks, hauling up satellites and other equipment, as well as men and women to a permanent space station. My hope was that not just pilots, scientists, and engineers would go into space, but that one day ordinary citizens—doctors, accountants, musicians, writers, and artists would experience space, too.
That’s why in 1979 I got excited about creating a program along with Dr. Dick Boolootian to help United Airlines 727 pilots learn how to fly the space shuttle. The shuttle system was little more than a huge rocket booster attached to a winged orbiter space vehicle that looked and operated much like an airplane once the initial fuel tanks and boosters were gone, so it was only logical that with a little training, most pilots could learn how to fly a shuttle. Although such an idea may seem absurd now, at that time it made sense, especially when the shuttle began to fly in April 1981. I spent hours on end in Dick Boolootian’s office bouncing ideas off him, wondering how we could develop space travel for ordinary folks. Others proposed that commercial entities and private enterprises might even want to purchase a space shuttle. Unfortunately, those kinds of creative ideas were quickly squelched after the Challenger disaster in 1986. But from 1979 to 1981, my brain was firing on all pistons, and what fueled the engine was my passion to explore space.
I had been sober for several years now, and while I still struggled with brief periods of depression, I was inspired by the possibilities of how I might use my talents to help renew America’s passion for space exploration.
In February 1982, I became particularly enamored with the idea of Americans going back to the moon. I attended several conferences at the California Space Institute in San Diego, headed up by Jim Arnold, the same organization led today by America’s first woman astronaut, Sally Ride. I had some contacts with General Dynamics regarding the possibilities of establishing a more permanent lunar presence. At another conference in Houston, Dave Criswell made a powerful presentation on the possibility of beaming solar energy back from the moon. Dave got everyone excited about installing rows of solar panels on the moon’s surface that would be powerful enough to send power to satellite relays and back to Earth. I was thrilled that creative minds were finally thinking about sound economic and practical reasons for going to another celestial body to do more than simply stomp around, do a few experiments, plant some flags, and kick up some dust.
I knew I could apply my knowledge of orbital mechanics to develop techniques for a spacecraft to travel continually between Earth and the moon in continuous cycling