Buzz Aldrin: Mission to Mars — June 8, 2013

hello and thank you for joining us today my name is Janet Tran and I'm the education manager here at the Walter and Leonore Annenberg presidential learning center and I am proud to welcome you to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and library in honor of our men and women in uniform both past and present who defend our freedoms I'd like to invite Kim Carter and Ben Lang from the citizens scholar Institute at Royal High School to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you so much and please be seated thank you before we get started today I wanted to recognize a few special guests in our audience so first thank you to mr. bill hoel and principal Kathleen Ross and the students teachers and parents from Vista fundamental school here in simi valley california principal Debra salgado and her team of the citizens scholar institute at royal high school and all their students dr. Michelle Herzog the vice president of the National Council for social studies and a member of our National Advisory Council and of course Joanne Drake chief administrative officer and the heart and soul of the Reagan foundation now something tells me that our remarkable guest today needs no introduction still before I invite him to the stage I'd be remiss in this place of great history if I didn't recount at least a few memorable moments from the life of dr. Buzz Aldrin even before he left that indelible footprint on the lunar surface dr. Buzz Aldrin already led and accomplished life he studied mechanical engineering at West Point served in the United States Air Force during the Korean conflict was a decorated colonel and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroics and then went on to earned his doctorate of science and astronautics at MIT the PhD along with his docking and rendezvous innovations for the Gemini and Apollo programs earned him the nickname of dr. rendezvous and as part of Gemini 12 he performed the first successful spacewalk and on July twentieth nineteen sixty-nine as part of the Apollo 11 crew he answered president john f kennedy's call to do things not because they are easy but because they are hard Buzz Aldrin Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins went to the moon 600 million people were raptured as Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the magnificent desolation of the moon and then revealed a plaque that read here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon we came in peace for all mankind now history without contexts and connections can be meaningless as Buzz Aldrin himself said the journey was far more than three men on a mission to the moon it was nineteen sixty-nine the year when Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated a decade troubled with domestic turbulence and haunted by the cold war conflict of Vietnam we came in peace for all mankind was exactly what Americans needed to hear and peace was after all the American objective of the cold or today we stand in a Presidential Library the house that President Ronald Reagan belt and whose presidency is defined by peace through strength that ultimately won the Cold War allow me if you will to make a few comparisons between two great men to start both President Reagan and Buzz Aldrin shared a passion for football in their youth and while I do love football I think we can all agree they found higher callings both President Reagan and Buzz Aldrin also shared a great love of NASA in the United States space program despite bearing deep scars from it before leaving the dusty lunar surface Buzz Aldrin left a small pouch on the moon containing mementos including a patch from Apollo 1 for those of you in the audience who don't know or don't remember Apollo 1 was the inaugural shuttle of the Apollo program and it did not make it past the test launch phase an explosion ended the lives of three astronauts including ed white one of dr. Aldred's friends and mentors but despite such grief Buzz Aldrin rejected fear and boldly traversed the surface of the Moon President Reagan carried the grief of a nation in 1986 after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger all eyes of the nation were on challenger back in the day when school teachers could take a teachable moment and many school children SAT anticipation to watch the shuttle liftoff it did not but he comforted a nation recalling that exploration and discovery can be painful the future President Reagan reminded us does not belong to the faint-hearted it belongs to the brave the tragedy of challenger crew could have been in vain yet less than two years later under President Reagan's watch the United States successfully launched the discovery orbiter from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida these men remind us the tragedies don't define Americans resilience does so clearly both President Reagan and Buzz Aldrin shared an optimism and the belief that America's best days are ahead with our work here at the walter Lenora Annenberg presidential Learning Center we strive to create engaged in conscientious citizens in the Civic learning world we're at our brains thinking of ways to get students engaged as i read mission to Mars I wondered was there ever a time when children were more engaged and more proud to be Americans than during that golden age of Apollo Buzz Aldrin will present us with his vision for space exploration and settlement but maybe if we look more closely at his plan he has answers to a few of our national questions as well so without further delay I invite to the stage a decorated pilot a celebrated author a space pioneer recipient of the presidential medal of freedom recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal NASA's own dr. rendezvous a man with an asteroid named after him a crater named after him multiple stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and as some of you may recall from 30 rock he's amongst a handful of men who can say to the moon I walked on your face please join me in welcoming the one and only dr. Buzz Aldrin thank you so much for being here so before we speak about your book today I wanted to address for a few people in the audience who were able to see during the Pledge of Allegiance you did a vet salute could you tell us a little bit more about that yes I was reminded after 2008 that there was a law introduced by a senator allowing not mandating but allowing veterans in stores outdoors at the Pledge of Allegiance or the star-spangled banner to render a hand salute instead of putting their hand over their heart to me that's very important that veterans understand this and even more important than non-veterans understand why those people those few people around you that you see saluting during the national anthem that they are the people that served this country years ago and are very proud about their service as we should be proud about their service this is a wonderful gesture and I'm reminded that I was at the paris air show in his opening a few years ago and at the opening they played the Star Spangled Banner and and I saluted and somebody asked me why are you doing that and I said well there was a law passed a woman and a voice behind me said yes I introduced that law into the Senate I am very proud of my my service to the country and the words on that plaque that said we came in peace for all mankind I think our wonderful words to remind us that reminds me anyway that everything I believe we do in our space efforts with the technologies that we've learned and even with the competitiveness that exists that the United States purpose is to bring peace to all the world and that's why we venture outward not doing things that are easy but things that are hard to set an example for our young people our technicians and the rest of the world well thank you someone remind ourselves how fortunate we are to have lived and live in this wonderful country of ours we are very fortunate and I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you for your service to our country as well now the American space program has a remarkable pass from landing on the moon to the space station to the Hubble telescope and now the Mars Curiosity in mission to Mars you speak about the future of the program why is Mars the key to the future of space exploration in your opinion Mars has been the ultimate objective as uttered by quite a few leaders in the past somehow we through missteps through maybe political influence we've never reached the point of making it a specific objective I'm 83 I don't know how many years I've got left but I certainly hope to be around when Mars is made a specific objective and I believe that that should be during the 50th anniversaries of six out of seven successful landings on the moon from july twenty nineteen to December 2022 right in the middle of a re-election year where the president who succeeds in to the White House on my birthday january twentieth 2017 that's why I'm thinking of moving to Washington well I think we don't I paid enough taxes here in cali now you can see a lot of people in the audience are holding your book so they haven't been able to read about why you have such a focus on the settlement and not just the exploration of Mars do you think you could expand further on that yes I I even wrote a science fiction story in 1996 and in it I believed that the people from Alpha Centauri who came to earth to visit should return and go back even though their world was going to be destroyed that's the reason they came here obviously I've changed my mind I believe that earth human beings now have the capability to establish a refuge a safe location elsewhere in the solar system in the event something happens here like what wiped out the dinosaurs a pestilence a nuclear conflict who knows what my most admirable or one of my admirable astro physicist Stephen Hawking gave us two hundred years to establish a presence a growing settlement and I said to him dr. Hawking I think we can beat that 200 years I believe that Mars is clearly the most earth-like object that may have harbored life in some form it appears to me that there's a lot of wind in that thin atmosphere on Mars and some people have said there were oceans on Mars oceans of water their art today but if the 200 mile an hour winds blow long enough there happens to be a volcano 90,000 feet high higher than anything here on earth and it's got a lot of dust on it and I think the winds would blow that dust and cover the frozen oceans because they would be frozen now I'm not an astrophysicist but this is just one of my concepts and and I believe that some of the evidence that we see of stream beds and others and the polls that have ice on them the fact that Mars is day is not 24 hours it's about 24 and a half hours and their tilt is not exactly the tilt of Earth that gives us the seasons but it's not far from it and they go a little further from the Sun and then come back a little closer they're not a perfect circle so they have seasons there it's pretty cold on on Mars I think we're that's pretty cold on places of the earth to and and we managed to do pretty well it clearly is a better place to set up housekeeping than the moon 13 days of daylight with the Sun shiny gets very hot 13 days of darkness it gets very cold no atmosphere nothing grows just crystals of water in very dark craters don't go back to the moon now if there's anything to take from this conversation it is don't go back to the moon and we'll remember that now i want to speak a little bit about space tourism you've been a long advocate of outside agencies outside the government you know supporting space travel however ultimately you want a president to commit to the settlement of Mars why is that so important let's see I think you have to two questions here one is a president saying something about going somewhere somewhere Mars in it and yeah and the other one was about tourism so why is it not the president is going to say thou shalt establish tourism in space it's the private sector that's going to do that and the people that get enticed with what's up there and yes I've been an advocate of tourism in space for 20-30 years we started thinking about that when when the shuttle had a big cargo bay and maybe you could put people in there as a matter of fact just before the shuttle began flying I was approached and worked with some United Airlines pilots and they wanted the airline to buy a shuttle so that they could fly something better than the 727 so that they they could begin to fly to shuttle commercially and and while one of these discussions was taking place we were talking about how you going to pick people and some voice in the back of the room said why don't you have a lottery man I thought what a fantastic idea and for about 20 years now I've been trying to cultivate the right situation to install a lottery I don't do that anymore because somebody has come up with a much better idea now you young kids out there let's say 18 to 20 or maybe everyone's younger than have you ever heard of that grooming fragrance called acts that really attracts the ladies well now acts is a part of a big company Unilever and acts has purchased 22 suborbital flights and they've advertised that you just applied to axe Apollo calm and show a picture and a few other things and then there'll be a hundred or so picked and by next December they will go to the axe Apollo space Academy in Florida and there they'll get further training and evaluation and it'll be narrowed down to 22 people and I've talked to the company that's supplying these rides and it's not Richard Branson and his flowery well marketed Virgin Galactic but he's a smart guy the one who owns this X Corps company and he's got great plans for the future so I want to be sort of an ambassador to this effort for several years in the future because I think it is a wonderful opportunity now that's for ordinary folks now not so ordinary if you got two hundred thousand dollars why Richard Branson will sign you up at the bottom of the list now if you've got a billion well there doesn't there's a person who has a company called Golden Spike now he'll he'll take your money I don't know how much and land you on the moon I I didn't think there was much chance of that ever happening but then then he reminded me that what he's really talking about is a good idea that there are nations in the world that don't have a space program but they have young people they would like to develop a lot of enthusiasm for technology why wouldn't that nation pool together come up with the money and then select one person to be that nations role model to land on the moon I think it's a good idea that pretty soon he's going to run out of countries right there but I've got a place for him to send his people as part of my design for what the international lunar base will look like we have to know what it's going to look like not so that our NASA astronauts are going to go there but the international countries are going to land objects they have to be put together now guess who's going to do that the good old USA we're going to learn the tele robotics on the Big Island of Hawaii to put big objects together to make a base on the moon now why is that so important if we're not sending our NASA astronauts there I'll tell you why it's important because we're going to go to the moons of Mars and occupy those moons and then us and other people are going to land objects on the surface of Mars and we're going to put them together so that we've got a well established base on the surface of Mars before we start delivering people on an invention of mine back in 1985 which has been improved on considerably by the University Purdue cycling spaceships now that's a lot for you guys to swallow but most of it is kind of in this book and and I'll be trying to convince people when white houses that that they should accept the the plan of the future and they'll come up with two things American greatness and space transportation American expansion of humanity outward in the solar system those are our objectives in their mind and you can read all about the aldryn cycler and now you've addressed the group of students in our audience and we do have many here today so I was hoping you could speak a little bit about your upbringing and some of the choices you made as a youngster led you down your professional path as an innovator and a pioneer I have indeed been blessed to have been born in the United States at the particular time I was how lucky can a person be my mother was born in 1903 the year the Wright brothers flew my father was an aviation pioneer he knew the Wright brothers a little bit he knew Charles Lindbergh knew Howard Hughes his education he had a physics professor in college Robert Goddard who Robert Goddard is he's the pioneer American who developed liquid fuel rockets and my father helped Charles Lindbergh get some money from the google phone Guggenheim Foundation to help finance it my father started an engineering school after his MIT doctor's degree and that engineering school eventually became the air force institute of technology and guess who paid for my doctor's degree at MIT Air Force institut teknologi now because of sort of that background and being lucky or being shrewd and expert fighter pilot it's pretty good for your record to have shot down a couple of airplanes in the Korean War that that helps it it helps convince Navy test pilots night carrier landing people that they're not the only ones who have a little airplane talent that the Air Force does to my education just came along I was just back in my hometown at my high school Montclair high school New Jersey and that education and that beautiful town prepared me for West Point service in the military the opportunity to go to West Point I chose not to go through test pilot training because you know they're there are a lot of people that are really natural pilots well I was good but I was looking beyond just testing airplanes so all of this gave me the opportunity to be intelligent write my thesis at MIT not about intercepting airplanes but about joining spacecraft together in space rendezvous and because of that NASA said maybe we could use this guy and they they changed the rules so I became an astronaut and and then I was in the right place when we didn't really understand how to do space walking but I'd been a scuba diver and so using that scuba diver training when someone said why don't we train underwater neutral buoyancy in the spacesuit I said yes yes yes great idea so I was the first astronaut to train under water for space walking and the last mission in the two-man geminii series was a tremendous success in space walking and prepared us for Apollo that put me in the right position next thing I knew Neil Armstrong and I were on a mission that got changed to become the first mission to orbit the moon Apollo 8 we weren't on the mission the three other guys were but we learned to work together and the rotation of the cruise was such that after one mission they had a crew for the next two so the backup crew from this mission became the prime crew on not Apollo 9 not Apollo 10 but Apollo 11 wow talk about somebody being in the right place at the right time and now what am i doing I'm planning to send humanity to begin to occupy another planet in this solar system led by Americans what a wonderful opportunity I've had in my life and and I just feel so grateful and I want all of you to know that a key to that is education and perseverance look at a lot of opportunities pick the ones that you like and then be good at it or at least try to be good at it thank you so much well I think it's time to take questions from the audience there will be staff members folding microphones on both levels at this point if you have any questions for dr. Buzz Aldrin and please state your name right over here my name is Michael Algren and thank you now I'd like to know what your thoughts were when you exited the spacecraft and started down the ladder and actually walked on the moon what were you thinking inside of your brain at that time and there were a lot of thoughts that were in and out of my mind it's in the book as well no not everything we we were announced as a crew in January after Apollo 8 flew in december january nineteen sixty-nine and i went back and told my wife that I was on Apollo 11 and it could be the first landing and I said you know I just assumed beyond a later flight where we would do more interesting things because I don't like to give speeches and do all of this stuff unfortunately there was no choice I was part of a team and it was up to me to carry on that team so maybe that's one of the thoughts that went through my mind before I went down the ladder I had looked out the window and watched Neil go down the ladder now why did Neil go down first the military and leadership in the United States generally says that the commander the leader does things first okay there were a lot of other reasons why I should have been first but that the important one I may have mentioned or the other one was that Neal was closer to the hatch then I will I won't tell you which it was really but it was the correct decision so now I go down the ladder and I'm there and I've already seen that he he can walk around pretty easily down there so I don't need to do what the checklist said was hold on and check stability and see how it's going to be I I knew that it was going to be real easy to walk around at that time I had one of those biological urges now we had just prepared for a while outside and and we had made sure that the receptacle for those urges was empty so I had great confidence and now Neil and his first step on the moon but i had my first haha so so other than that we were really concerned with what comes next in the checklist we have a question back there dr. Armstrong thank you for taking my question the propelling yourself off of the lunar surface required quite a bit of force would it be possible for the men who are going to Mars to be able to leave the surface without a couple of years of preparation as far as fuel and that type of thing because of the mass of Mars as opposed to the massive let's say the moon ok that's and clear let let me see are you referring to jumping or are you furring to the rocket liftoff actually the liftoff to remove yeah let's say the astronauts that go to Mars or is it a one way trip are they going to be able to come home yes and no about ten years ago well they even long before that i wrote a science fiction story where people came from a star and then they went back home again but i don't think that way any more if we go to a star we should go there and and be prepared to inhabit wherever we go we should know as much as we can about it the purpose of sending humans to another object is not just to look at it we got robots that can very thoroughly look at it and we can be closed in orbit and look down at it but the purpose to get people there on the surface is to set up a settlement and not bring people back with again it where we can do with them when they come back we need people to gradually build up a sustainability a critical labor force whatever that may mean now if we were to go and come back and then go again and come back you know what I'll bet you that Congress would find another way to spend the money and everything we would have invested and going to Mars would be doing something else we don't want that to happen so when humans go to Mars they should commit themselves to permanence now the fact that there is a company that is now advertising Mars one one way to Mars I don't give a much chance for being able to follow through on what they're doing because I don't know where they're going to get the money get the spacecraft the rockets and the expertise to be able to do what they say they're going to do in about ten years is when they're saying but they've got 78,000 people who've put in some money saying they want to do that and not come back so they've helped me convince people that when you go to Mars is for permanence at least they're thinking about it whether it's going to happen or not as you said the pilgrims didn't come here and make a u-turn on their boat well their stay I'm sorry the pilgrims didn't come here and make a u-turn on their boats they came here to settle so I think Mars will do you you heard me talk about the pilgrims on the Mayflower history books don't tell me that they waited around Plymouth Rock for the return trip ah they came here to stay but it's not a rat way of thinking that when humans go to Mars it is such a big deal just think hundreds thousands of years from now the history books will talk about the human race doing all these wonderful things on earth and all of a sudden we started a place somewhere else I know that's going to be a big deal in history for the people that go there but my big concern is convincing the world leader the president that the legacy of having committed the United States to leading the world in establishing a settlement elsewhere as about the biggest legacy you could ever want as a president of the United States and yeah I remember that because I'm going to need your support about 20 17 18 and 19 how much hours did you spend on the moon how many hours did we spend on the moon that's easy I won't make that a long answer okay now the spacecraft was there with us in it we landed and we lift it off about 20 21 hours later okay but we were outside on the surface about two two and a half hours and I think we have a question over here thank you hi buzz first of all I want to say you are a stud I I think there are a lot of collectors and enthusiasts that wonder if there's any chance that the omega speedmaster may get law come back from being lost in the mail at any point the Omega speed the watch did well the one up with you on the moon any chance that that's been found or come up any other news on that well I got I got two watches one of them's a nice expensive gold wooden and I like people to see that one but this is more accurate this is this is quartz and battery the omega speedmaster watch that passed the qualifications by NASA to be used for space flights most of us assumed that when we were issued that watch it was kind of ours to keep and when we left NASA we would keep it you know the the Army did that with little cheap watches during the world war they were called hat watches I think my time well when I was leaving NASA to go to Edwards Air Force Base the corners are pretty cramped there and the display wasn't too good so I decided to send a lot of memorabilia on loan to the Smithsonian so do people from NASA came and inventoried everything took it over to NASA and got it ready for packing when the Smithsonian received the shipment no watch last it was seen was waiting to be packed so that's a story of the watch that I wore first on the moon Neil for various reasons elected not to wear his watch on the surface he must have suspected that of all the things you can have on the moon one of the more useless things is to know what time it is in Houston Texas but certainly as far as Omega was concerned is pretty historic item and the answer question is we don't know where it is it is stolen property so if somebody decides to sell it by regardless of how they acquired it they've been dealing with stolen property and we have a question back here thank you for taking my question good after good afternoon and dr. all right my question is now that space travel is going to be more commercially available still two hundred thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars it's still quite a bit of money do you expect the value of that possibility dropping significantly uh I I really don't know you talked to the people who are doing that and of course they're going to tell you the more we fly the price is going to come on down inflation is going to go on up and there just may not be that many opportunities available so the price mate may stay up pretty high I do think the lottery is a pretty good idea so there are methods like that that are very attractive this old lady in Florida just walked off with five hundred million dollars that's not bad if you're pretty lucky I think that sub-orbital flight is a fancy that is a filler adventure an opportunity until the opportunity comes along to be able to get into orbit that's where the real payoff is it's not just going up and getting Richard Branson's astronaut wings I I tried to tell them that's not a good idea but but I think sub-orbital flight is available is a good thing to do and a lot of people want to want to do it and experience that but I think the opportunity of getting into orbit is so much greater it's going to be a lot more expensive but then climbing Mount Everest isn't for everybody either and diving down to the deepest part of the ocean isn't for everybody either I keep reminding Jim Cameron that at one time he did ask me if I go with him but I think he found out that it was much cheaper for just one guy to go down there so we have a question from a young lady over here please hi dr. Aldrin i'm sarah hall from vista fundamental school I want to know what did it feel like when you took your first step on the moon would you say your first steps so a little description about the feelings around there well the first steps were remarkable because the footprint was so well defined so so perfect and just when we started there were three pictures up there of the boot print on the surface that pin is also a boot print why do I wear it well I took the picture that it was easy to keep your balance if you lean over a little bit here on earth pretty soon you're going to exceed your footprint and you're going to have to jump in a hurry or you're going to fall but not on the mood if you get like this you just push off with your foot and put it out like this it's a lot easier walking around without so much gravity and can we hear from someone back there hi I'm Maya tauber and I just wanted to know your opinion on since there's now we have some some more really good technology like for curiosity on Mars Mars do you think that robots might um take over astronauts jobs like we'll have really good technology so we might not eat humans too go absolutely robots are getting smarter and smarter I'm not sure that from what I see a lot of people do in these days that humans are getting that much smarter and smarter let me let me give you a quick story 11 years ago 11 12 years ago we landed two robots on Mars opposite sides they were supposed to last 90 days one of them got stuck after five years and the other ones still going the program manager the project manager of that program a very qualified person recently stated that what those two did in those five years five years kind of moving around one day's instruction at a time very conservative could have been done in one week if we had a human being with intelligence in orbit around Mars communicating directly telling those robots what to do now that is powerful trying to control something as far away as Mars and look at the wonderful things curiosity is giving us look at much more we would get if we had somebody there we don't I think we need to go back to the moon and tell a robot what to do we can tell it what to do from a distance away without all the expense we went to the moon for prestige that's a easy way of saying it prestige by beating the Russians prestige by gaining technology that we thought we needed to do developed four varieties of reasons but but we really a human being telling things what to do and looking at Iraq and deciding what kind of rocket is you can put a TV camera on that rock and send it back and a scientist can tell you what kind of a rocket was there certainly are judgment factors that you need to have the human being there to do but we have to be very judicious because it is just very very expensive to send humans somewhere safely in a lander supply them with all the things they need the lander sophisticated and if we've already done it we have to really be sure that we want to sacrifice being first to the Chinese who will be versed in the 21st second century by getting there before me do all I have to do with somebody around the moon once or bland them for one hour and come back and they beat us the barrier is much higher for us we have to go back there and do a whole lot more so why would we want to do that when there are such greater opportunities I hate to dwell on that subject but it's extremely important because there are people in Congress and other places that want this country to go back to the moon with our NASA astronauts for their purposes for political reasons for whatever they are far as I'm concerned it's not in the best interest of this country for the future I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record but I really feel so strong about that and if we have time for one more question can we hear from students over there can't wait hi um I was wondering why we should specifically invest in Mars and face the trouble of Terra facing when we could instead invest in developing space habitats that will benefit further space travel and sustain human life as well that's outstanding question we need to do what you said first rate now we need to establish that habitat a test bed at the space station and test all that life support equipment just recently a friend of mine who's number one tourist recently came out with a proposal that a lot of us think is a very good proposal he wants to take advantage of the Earth Mars positions because in january of 2018 he wants to send a married couple on the spacecraft to fly by mars and come back 500 days later that would be such an inspiring and pioneering mission i hope we can get ready for it in time because it would do so much for the country to be able to do that I'm trying to get him a an alternate mission in case that won't work or you always have a backup crew for a primary mission so we train the backup crew I'm trying to get a nice mission for the backup crew t who's less than a year later we need to prepare the spacecraft the interplanetary habitats the interplanetary spacecraft major living quarters not the small taxi we need a small taxi and we need a larger part as a team for redundancy to be part of and we're going to take that habitat and maybe put one on the moon for the internationals because it's a control center then we'll have one off the moon will put one on the moons of Mars and we'll probably put one or two on the surface of Mars because it's a place to live and operate out of that is the most important thing we need right now to prove how to do that habitat because that opens up the ability to send humans wherever we want to and to bring them back when it's appropriate when we send people to the moon of Mars we don't want to send them there to stay it arrest of their life we're going to bring them back but they've got things to do they got to build a base on a surface a grand Wes in the back to Mars a great question and a great answer now you can tell from the audience and some of the questions you've heard that we have perhaps one of the first people to walk or settle on Mars and the audience right now what advice would you give them got a little astronaut up there as well well if you've already gone to college you're probably too old if you haven't gone to college you better learn the things that might help you out working with other people working as a team having skills that will be useful practical and a healthy physical conditioning you need a dedicated spirit you need to think of something you want to do and then make sure you do everything that you could possibly do that's how you dedicate the kind of perseverance will will really need to be a good team worker to be somebody who likes long term activities I'm disqualified by that because I don't like that sort of thing it's a great opportunity probably the greatest you could ever think of to to be a part of serving mankind and your country by being one of those distinct few if you don't make it that's okay not everybody gets exactly what they want I sure don't I keep wanting it though so perseverance is really maybe the most important thing you got to get along with people oh you got to make friends got to have a good sense of humor thank you so much dr. Aldrin for your words of wisdom I wish we had time to answer all of your questions right there Mike somebody's going to tell me just how cool I am I think you know I've got two cell phones and I got a Twitter guess what my call sign is the at the real buzz not that Toy Story guy he's a fake so before we leave today I feel logistic logistical items please remain seated until Buzz Aldrin and his guests apart and the book signing will take place in the museum stores upstairs dr. Buzz Aldrin it's been a privilege having you here today and we're all inspired by your vision and everyone if you could just please join me one more time and thanking thank you where we're going I follow you

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Length: 59min 56sec (3596 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 10 2013