Buzz Aldrin quotes

Born
January 20, 1930, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, U.S.

Occupation
Astronaut, engineer.

Buzz Aldrin is an American engineer and former astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11, he was one of the first two humans to land on the Moon, and the second person to walk on it.

Nobody cares about the bronze or silver medals.
– Buzz Aldrin

I realize that my life is not the common ordinary person.
– Buzz Aldrin

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.
– Buzz Aldrin

You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable.
– Buzz Aldrin

Some things just can’t be described. And stepping onto the moon was one of them.
– Buzz Aldrin

There are always door openings. And gradually, it accumulates. The opportunities open up in front of you.
– Buzz Aldrin

There’s a need for accepting responsibility – for a person’s life and making choices that are not just ones for immediate short-term comfort. You need to make an investment, and the investment is in health and education.
– Buzz Aldrin

One of the major problems with long-term deep space human flight is the requirement for radiation shielding.
– Buzz Aldrin

‘Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame’ tells it like it really was in America’s early space program – the adventure, the risks, and the rewards.
– Buzz Aldrin

It’s time to open the space frontier to citizen explorers.
– Buzz Aldrin

I didn’t start skiing until I was 50. My wife Lois taught me how to ski. I’m proficiently conservative.
– Buzz Aldrin

I grew up in New Jersey and never went up the Statue of Liberty.
– Buzz Aldrin

We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there.
– Buzz Aldrin

Growing up, I was fascinated with Buck Rogers’ airplanes. As I began to mature in World War II, it became jets and rocket planes. But it was always in the air.
– Buzz Aldrin

Bringing an asteroid back to Earth? What’s that have to do with space exploration? If we were moving outward from there, and an asteroid is a good stopping point, then fine. But now it’s turned into a whole planetary defense exercise at the cost of our outward exploration.
– Buzz Aldrin

Going to Mars would evolve humankind into a two-planet species.
– Buzz Aldrin

In Mars, we’ve been given a wonderful set of moons… where we can send continuous numbers of people.
– Buzz Aldrin

You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention.
– Buzz Aldrin

Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon. The only thing they know is who’s number one and who’s number two. Does anybody know who the last man was?
– Buzz Aldrin

For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.
– Buzz Aldrin

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America’s future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it’s time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.
– Buzz Aldrin

We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.
– Buzz Aldrin

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we’ve downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.
– Buzz Aldrin

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.
– Buzz Aldrin

My first biography written in ’73 was not ‘Journey To The Moon.’ It was ‘Return To Earth.’ Because for me, that was the more difficult task – disappointment.
– Buzz Aldrin

Save the taxpayer’s money by canceling the Ares 1 and V.
– Buzz Aldrin

I’m sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.
– Buzz Aldrin

Trips to Mars, the Moon, even orbit, will require that we provide astrotourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including paying each other.
– Buzz Aldrin

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.
– Buzz Aldrin

I think there would be no shortage of applicants to the government astronaut corps to be settlers on the planet Mars. And I think this would be very inspiring.
– Buzz Aldrin

I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime.
– Buzz Aldrin

As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.
– Buzz Aldrin

There’s a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight.
– Buzz Aldrin

Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.
– Buzz Aldrin

Before deciding what to do about national space policy, Obama set up an outside review panel of space experts, headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official.
– Buzz Aldrin

It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the Moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.
– Buzz Aldrin

Armstrong described the lunar surface as ‘beautiful.’ I thought to myself, ‘It’s not really beautiful. It’s magnificent that we’re here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.’
– Buzz Aldrin

I don’t think we’re going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.
– Buzz Aldrin

Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans.
– Buzz Aldrin

Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.
– Buzz Aldrin

I inherited depression from my mother’s side of the family.
– Buzz Aldrin

The guys who walk on Mars are going to be historic.
– Buzz Aldrin

The beauty of Hawaii probably surpasses other places. I like the Big Island and the two mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, where you can look out at the stars.
– Buzz Aldrin

The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.
– Buzz Aldrin

To move forward, what’s required is a unified space agenda based on exploration, science, development, commerce, and security.
– Buzz Aldrin

Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people.
– Buzz Aldrin

I think the American Dream used to be achieving one’s goals in your field of choice – and from that, all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow.
– Buzz Aldrin

There’s no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It’s no longer there. We’re descending rather rapidly.
– Buzz Aldrin

Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.
– Buzz Aldrin

Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don’t have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what’s going on and what you should be involved in.
– Buzz Aldrin

Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space.
– Buzz Aldrin

Look at what Silicon Valley has done – the advance of computers.
– Buzz Aldrin

I do celebrity ski races all over the world.
– Buzz Aldrin

It’s real easy to manufacture what you think the people want to hear. But that’s not very honest.
– Buzz Aldrin

I still say, ‘Shoot for the moon; you might get there.’
– Buzz Aldrin

Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I’m on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding – yet beautiful – Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.
– Buzz Aldrin

Walking around on the moon was significantly easier than we’d thought it would be. There weren’t any balance problems, so you weren’t tumbling over.
– Buzz Aldrin

I know: If you’re looking down at Earth, you’re looking through an atmosphere that has a bit of haze in many places and not just occasional clouds.
– Buzz Aldrin

I want to reach a new generation. That’s why I am Twittering now. I have a BlackBerry, an iPhone and a Mac.
– Buzz Aldrin

I grew up in a country that I thought was special. And it was.
– Buzz Aldrin

My father’s an early aviator, and my first flight was with him at age two. Now, despite the fact that I got sick on the flight, I still enjoyed it, I believe.
– Buzz Aldrin

If you want poets in space, you’ll have to wait.
– Buzz Aldrin

My own American Dream was to serve my country as best I could and make a difference in America – and in the world.
– Buzz Aldrin