Leaving Orbit (11 page)

Buzz Aldrin speaks for an hour with no notes. His verbal style is roundabout, tangential, loopy, anecdotes starting out and never quite reaching their points; clauses starting out and never quite reaching their verbs. He is charming and handsome and he has walked on the moon, and we hang on his every word. He tells stories about getting to the moon and back, about the world tour he, Neil, and Mike took upon their return, about the travel reimbursement form he received from NASA that detailed his work-related travel: Houston to Cape Canaveral; Cape Canaveral to Moon; Moon to Cape Canaveral; Cape Canaveral to Houston. His total reimbursement for the trip was thirty-three dollars. He tells us about his idea for the Aldrin Cycler, a series of spacecraft put into permanent orbits around Earth and Mars that would allow humans to travel to Mars by hopping from one to the next. (This proposal might sound silly coming from most public figures, but Buzz’s expertise in orbital mechanics demands that we take the idea seriously). He ends by telling us about his idea he calls ShareSpace—a way of paying for human spaceflight through a lottery. Buy a ticket, get a chance in a random drawing to be selected to go to space. If you don’t get chosen, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your money went to help further the project. It’s actually a pretty great idea.

After Buzz’s talk, followed by more thunderous applause, we make our way out to the table in the courtyard for the book signing. The line of people waiting now traces a winding path though the courtyard and out of sight, several hundred people at least. Buzz is unfazed. We take our seats at the table. Buzz greets the first person in line, signs the first book. The first person in line is, of course, a hard-core autograph collector—a white man in his forties, glasses and sweatshirt, with a workmanlike air and a complete lack of fawning. Though Buzz is polite, the exchange between them is one between people who have agreed to live with a certain amount of animosity. The autograph collector may in fact be a fan of spaceflight, may at one point have worshipped Buzz Aldrin and dreamed of being like him. Buzz, for his part, has probably met this autograph collector before, and at any rate has come to spot the type from a hundred paces. In addition to free events like this one, Buzz also participates in autograph trade shows, where attendees pay fees, often quite steep, for autographs. Buzz charges $500 for a simple autograph, more for signing an artifact, and even more as a “completion fee,” meaning a single photograph or artifact has been signed by all three Apollo 11 astronauts or both Gemini 12 astronauts. These items have exponentially higher value in the autograph market.

The autograph seekers: there are droves of them, wherever astronauts are to be found. A combination of fandom, profiteering, and cottage industry, the trade in autographs has created an offshoot to the public appearances of astronauts, especially moonwalkers. A person standing in line with a stack of four hardcover copies of Buzz’s book has invested about sixty dollars; once all the books are signed, the same stack will be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. These people follow Buzz and the other moonwalkers everywhere they go, and their presence is both a reminder of the depth of fascination people have for astronauts and of the limitless drive to profit from that same fascination.

Buzz encounters autograph collectors like this one at the trade shows, and in that context their relationship is more clearly defined—this man pays Buzz money, and in exchange Buzz signs whatever the man wants. But the man’s presence here today is a gray area—by showing up at a free book festival where Buzz is supporting his new book, the man is taking advantage of this appearance in a way that cheats the system, and both he and Buzz know it. The next in line is also an autograph collector, and the next. Buzz refuses to sign more than one book for the second man, though he’d done it for the previous one without complaint. The third autograph collector in line hands Buzz a book missing its title page. This is a trick some autograph collectors pull to get two autographs for the price of one book—he’d had Buzz sign the title page once, then knifed that page out to get the same book signed again. Buzz opens the book to find the title page gone, then slams it shut again and slides it back to the man with a scowl. The autograph collector accepts it and goes on his way without a word.

Soon we start seeing real space fans, die-hard fans, who want to talk to Buzz about his time on the moon. After an hour, the line has barely moved; things are progressing slowly because every single person not only wants to have a book signed, each also wants the chance to
meet
Buzz, to speak with him, to get a picture with him. They all want to touch the moon hand. A lot of people in the line are of the right age for the space obsession born in childhood, but not all of them—plenty of autograph seekers are old enough to have already been adults when Buzz walked on the moon or young enough to have missed it.

Among those of the right age range, everybody wants to tell Buzz Aldrin where they were and what they were doing while he was walking on the moon. These stories are almost uniformly uninteresting, as stories about watching TV tend to be. Buzz Aldrin nods and smiles politely. He is so patient with these stories it’s easy to forget that he has been listening to them for forty years.

Some people bring objects they want Buzz to sign: a moon-shaped nightlight, the yellowed and brittle front page of a small-town newspaper with Buzz Aldrin’s face, along with those of Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, under the enormous headline MAN WALKS ON MOON. A T-shirt with the NASA logo on it. A book about the planets published in the fifties. Buzz is not entirely consistent in his policy on signing these things—many times he simply takes the object and scribbles on it without comment, but other times he refuses—he’s here to sign his new book today, he explains to those people. One thing he is consistent about is Buzz Lightyear action figures. He signs them all happily. He even carries a special indelible pen that writes well on the white plastic of Buzz Lightyear’s thigh. The connection that ignites between Buzz Aldrin and the children who love Buzz Lightyear is truly adorable to behold.

Most people accept Buzz’s refusals politely and move on quickly. The professionals know that arguing or complaining will make no difference and could potentially get them blacklisted from future events; those who wanted his signature for themselves usually seem embarrassed and stammer out an apology.

But one woman argues with Buzz. She is middle-aged, with dyed red hair and a slightly harried look. She carries a huge autograph book under her arm. She doesn’t have a copy of Buzz’s autobiography, and holds the autograph book out to him instead. For a moment he seems to waver, but he sizes her up and signs the autograph book wordlessly. The woman watches him do it, lips pursed. She does not try to tell him where she was and what she was doing while he walked on the moon.

“I want to get the autographs of all the men who have walked on the moon in this book,” she says. “Do you know what is the best way to do that? Can I just mail it to people and ask them to mail it back?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Buzz answers sensibly. “We all get a lot of mail and a lot of requests for autographs, and things can get lost. If you really want to get as many as you can, you could go to trade shows.”

“What’s that?” she asks suspiciously.

“They’re held at convention centers and such. They charge admission, and all of the astronauts set their own fees for autographs and memorabilia and what have you.”

“You mean you charge
money
?” the woman asks, recoiling. I’m a single
parent.
I can’t afford to pay hundreds of dollars to go to these places and get these signatures.”

Buzz shrugs. “We all get a lot of requests for autographs,” he explains. “Some of us are reaching a point where we would think about saying no to everyone, and this is a way where we can do it where it’s a little more fair.”

“I don’t see how it’s
fair
,” the woman answers as she takes her autograph book back from Buzz. I don’t know who else has signed it, but it’s now worth at least $500.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Buzz says evenly. He may be sincere or completely sarcastic. He may be trying to get rid of her. This puts her over the edge, and she raises a single finger to lecture Buzz and me.

“I’m an American
citizen
,” she says firmly. “I helped pay for the moon landings. I helped pay for
your trip
to the moon. Now I want the autographs of the astronauts I paid to send, and you’re telling me I can’t get them unless I pay them money?”

“Neil Armstrong won’t do it at all,” I put in. “He doesn’t make public appearances anymore.” She gives me a look of hatred before turning her attention to Buzz again.

Buzz apologizes noncommittally, and she wanders away. It’s an interesting question, actually. Surely we who help pay for spaceflight have a right to the knowledge and images that come out of those missions. But how much access to these actual human beings have our taxes bought us? For how many years, how many decades afterward do they owe us their autographs and their answers to the question, yet again, how it felt to walk on the moon?

Over the course of the afternoon, as the line slowly wanders its way through the courtyard, I hear Buzz Aldrin asked dozens of times what it felt like to walk on the moon. He does not have a pat prepared answer—he tries to answer sincerely each time he is asked, and the answer takes on different nuances each time.

We were really just focused on staying alive
, he says to some people.

We had a lot of work to do so we didn’t really have time to reflect
, he says to others.

The feeling of one-sixth gravity was a lot of fun but also challenging to get used to, so we really had to concentrate on doing our jobs and not falling on our faces.

When we got back, we sort of felt we’d missed out on the whole thing.

When Buzz Aldrin expresses frustration at not being able to describe his impressions of space as well as a writer might, his statement is, on one level, merely a polite thing to say when he is excusing himself from answering a tough question for the millionth time. But taken literally, it means something quite startling. It means that Buzz Aldrin envies Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer and Oriana Fallaci, that—even more ludicrous—he envies me. Yet the thing we space writers have in common is the extent to which we admire and envy Buzz his experience of walking on the moon. We envy him so much that at times it’s hard for us to see Buzz at all, to see his accomplishment as something
he
did, a risk
he
took gambling against his own death, rather than simply as something we will never get to do.

Leading up to our day together, I’d tried to imagine what Buzz Aldrin would say about the retirement of the space shuttle. I anticipated that someone who has risked his life to walk on the surface of the moon probably thinks that the space shuttle, which can only reach low Earth orbit, has been a frustrating waste of energy and maybe a step in the wrong direction. But I would not have predicted that a conservative eighty-year-old Korean War veteran would support government funding for a massive science project as a general principle, or even less that he would support President Obama’s decision to cancel the Constellation project the following year, calling this “Obama’s JFK moment.”

It’s hard to reach conclusions about my day with Buzz Aldrin. One unavoidable fact: he is a pro at all this. Meeting hundreds of people who are in awe of him, people who ask the same questions over and over. The day I spent with him was an honor but also an exhausting ordeal—speaking to a packed auditorium, meeting hundreds of people, including several weepy and/or emotionally disturbed space enthusiasts. For Buzz and Lois, the event in Nashville was bracketed by two flights and followed by
another
event that same evening in another city. By the end of our day together, I was in need of a strong drink and a lie-down with a cold washcloth over my eyes, but Buzz was still going strong. He has had days like this nearly every day since he came back from the moon forty years ago. One can forgive astronauts like Neil Armstrong who found they simply could not take it and tried to disappear from the public eye. For his part, Buzz Aldrin is completely accustomed to being Buzz Aldrin and the fawning energy that generates itself around him, the way people want to have their pictures taken with him, the way they hold on to his hand a little too long.

When Buzz and I are saying our good-byes, I decide to blurt out my big question. “I have to ask you,” I stammer, “what do you think of the end of the space shuttle?”

Buzz shrugs.

“It’s too bad,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s all still perfectly good hardware, and we’ve got the facilities and the people who know how to keep it flying. We should have something newer by now, but we should be building on what we already have, not starting over.”

Buzz kisses my cheek before bundling Lois back into the limo with a daredevil’s wave.

In the end, Buzz Aldrin can’t tell me what to think. It’s hard for anyone to say, on this particular October day in Nashville, Tennessee, when seven hundred miles south of us
Atlantis
is stacked on the launchpad for the 129th space shuttle flight, what it means for American spaceflight to be winding itself down. Only when an era ends do you get to figure out what it has meant. Buzz Aldrin is a human being who personally planted an American flag on the surface of the moon. He doesn’t care if the shuttle is retired now or a few years from now. He knows, better than most of us, that the space shuttle is late-seventies technology. He had hoped to see an American go to Mars and has dedicated much of his post-Apollo life toward that goal. But he knows as well as I do that after the last shuttle launches, NASA won’t send up another crewed spaceship of its own until after he is gone from this earth.