[X] My Assistant

[ElkGroveDan]

I got to meet Buzz Aldrin last night at a reception for the California Space Authority. To be honest I meet a lot of famous people and celebrities in my job, so I really don't make a big deal when I meet someone. But for me, talking to Buzz Aldrin was special. I thought I'd share it with everyone here because my wife and coworkers really weren’t' that impressed. (though my six-year-old son was excited that I met an astronaut named "Buzz")

I felt kind of uncomfortable asking him about the obvious, so initially we chatted about his education efforts and advocacy of space exploration. After a while when I felt comfortable, and realized that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity I finally said "Do you mind if I ask you about your experiences as an astronaut and what it's like to walk on the moon?" I'm glad I did. He was very gracious and shared several anecdotes with me.

He said the first thing he checked when he stepped down on the surface was the functioning of the "plumbing" in his suit. He then talked about the biggest distraction they had the entire time. He said the cable for the video camera was rolled up in a drum and then extended out across the surface where the camera was set up. Buzz noted that it worked fine in the test beds at NASA, but on the moon the cable refused to lie flat and stood up in the form of a hazardous coil that they spent the entire time trying not to trip over.

I asked him if he really had a feeling of “being there” in that large stiff suit, or was it more like being inside a spacecraft looking out. He said it was a little of both. He said his feet on the surface had that feeling of contact but looking out was more of a removed experience. He said you can’t believe how stark it is, how everything is just black and white and completely devoid of color. He said if you really looked long enough at the surface you could detect very subtle colors.

I asked him if he ever took pause and thought back over his life and thought “Wow, here I am now on the moon.” He said they were really so busy they didn’t have time to ponder the magnificence of it all.

I asked him what might have been his most tense or frightening moment of it all, reentry, command module re-docking, landing etc. He said there were critical moments during all of it. He described the landing sequence and the LM traveling along laterally on its side as the fuel was getting critical and alarms were going off as a particularly tense time.

Those are some of my recollections of our conversation. For me it was a really special moment. I was 8 years old at the time of Apollo 11 and it was all such a large part of my childhood. For me this was one of those personal meetings that I suspect I will remember for a long time.