crew of Gemini X and the crews were
already assigned and in training for XI
and XII. The backup crew on X would
be the prime crew on XIII, but there
wasn’t a XIII. But things happened,
and obviously continued to happen,
from the time I crawled out of my crib
and got in trouble for getting into the
refrigerator.”
pilot alongside Commnand Pilot
Jim Lovell who was on his second
demonstrate that an astronaut could
successfully conduct a spacewalk.
A task which had proven to be
problematic to both the American
astronauts and Russian cosmonauts
in prior missions.
Aldrin had trained for the
mission using what was then a
novel technique of practicing his
Earth. The training proved to be so
successful that it has been a staple of
astronaut training ever since. During
the mission itself, Aldrin performed a
two-hour 20-minute spacewalk while
tethered and was able to perform a
number of extravehicular activities.
“My education plus my Air Force
directly to my MIT thesis on manned
orbital rendezvous. Now what’s a
Well, it’s actually quite similar when
space rendezvous that has been set
up by selected maneuvers to reach
the correct point, at the correct
time, with the correct velocity. So an
intercept can then be made that
is quite standard and familiar and
useful in an optimum backup fashion.
“Following the Moon landing,
I eventually applied that orbital
and the backside of the Moon. Since
NASA did not have a full appreciation
of that then, I switched to Mars. It’s
kind of hard to discover something
that’s there, you just haven’t found
it yet, but in a pioneering discovery
I found that there is a cycling orbit
between Earth and Mars that
continually rotates back and forth
with the only interval of Mars access,
or departing Mars, which is every
www.RocketSTEM .org
Buzz Aldrin holds up a model of the lunar lander during a press conference to announce the crew members for
improved by my inspiration and
work with Purdue University to a dual
synodic period cycling spacecraft,
which for simplicity is every other
two of these cycling spacecraft to
transport humans from the vicinity of
the Earth to a Mars landing in about
the standard international way of
transporting crews from the Earth to
Mars.
“It makes possible the dream of
a permanent human presence there.
“I’m keeping very current on all
the changes that might have an
affect on phasing this system in so
that potentially the next president in
July of 2019 -– on the 50th anniversary
– could make some statement that
I believe that within two decades
the United States can lead an
international human permanence
on the planet Mars. Which the more
i think about it will be a giant leap
of mankind to be remembered for
hundreds and thousands of years.”
Aldrin admires the work toward
launching humans to Mars being
done by Elon Musk and SpaceX, as
well as the recent successful test
of NASA’s Low Density Supersonic
Decelerator technology in this skies
above Hawaii.
“Not only his organization, but
I could say Elon himself, has been
designer of excellence and as a
rocket developer with spacecraft
follow-ons that appear to be
potentially very pioneering at this
time. But after Curiosity from JPL
endured seven minutes of terror – or
suspense or whatever you might call it
– it dawned on people that to land on
Mars in a way similar to how we land
on Earth from space would require
considerable attention be paid to
the thinner atmosphere at Mars. To
land like on Earth would require a
much larger heat shield called an
adjustable or an expandable ablator,
descent rocket to land.
“If the entry for landing at Mars
can be perhaps a bit more like
our descent to land on the Moon,
rather than an entry into the thick
atmosphere of Earth, if that proves to
be true, then it will result in what some
might call a game changer. We may
75
75