No Dream Is Too High - Buzz Aldrin Page 0,25

my thoughts about the program.

At one point during my comments, I didn’t use much tact. “Can you believe that they are using Heritage components to build the SLS?” I groused. “Do you know what that means? It’s old stuff. That’s not what America is all about!”

One of the staffers spoke up. “In full disclosure, sir, I’m the one who wrote that law.”

Oops! It was the old foot-in-mouth syndrome. I tried to say something positive, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Well, it’s stupid!”

So much for my space ambassadorship!

But it was stupid to use old parts in a new space program. We need to be forward thinking!

The world was quite impressed in July 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft flew past the planet Pluto, after being launched on January 19, 2006, on its journey venturing deeper into the mysterious Kuiper belt and beyond. Now that takes patience and perseverance. It was nearly ten years before New Horizons sent fascinating photographs of Pluto back to Earth. I was happy for the progress, but I was even more impressed when the European Space Agency’s Rosetta team caught up to and landed an unmanned satellite on a comet on November 12, 2014, and started sending photos back to Earth. Do you have any idea how difficult that was? Wow, talk about the ultimate rendezvous experience! I had been hoping that we could land on an asteroid, a much larger mountain of rock hurtling through space, but the Rosetta team did even better—landing on a speeding comet! The comet was much farther away from Earth than Mars ever is. Moreover, to control a landing on a moving, rotating comet, with communications transmissions limited to the speed of light, is incredibly impressive! That’s the kind of “never give up” spirit that I hope we can foster in the next group of U.S. space pioneers.

OF COURSE, I WELCOME EVERY OPPORTUNITY to keep space exploration in the news. For some reason, though, the Obama Administration had decided to ignore the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing in 2014. Christina and I bugged everyone we knew who had any political clout, saying, “Every U.S. president has met with the Apollo 11 astronauts to commemorate the anniversary of the initial Moon landing every five years. Surely you don’t want to be known as the first administration to eliminate that tradition. This is not merely American history; this is world history.”

Finally, the Obama White House conceded and agreed to have the president briefly meet with the Apollo 11 astronauts on the 45th anniversary of the first Moon landing. They refused, however, to allow our family members to attend the meeting, another departure from tradition. With every previous administration, regardless of political persuasion, the family members of Apollo 11 were always welcomed.

Christina, however, had learned an important lesson from the Air Force One incident. She refused to take no for an answer. She called another friend in the White House and requested that the family members be permitted to attend the meeting with the president.

“They are not going to let the family members in,” Christina’s White House contact reiterated. Nevertheless, Christina remained undaunted.

She called my family members and said, “You get on the vehicle transporting Carol Armstrong (Neil’s widow), Mike, and Buzz.”

She then called me and said, “When you are meeting with the president, casually mention that your family is outside in the White House reception area.”

When I greeted the president, I told him that my daughter, Jan, my grandson, Jeffry, and my son Andy were outside waiting on me. Sure enough, the president responded, “Oh, well, bring them inside.”

I smiled and said, “Why, thank you, Mr. President.”

Because of that persistence, Mike Collins’s daughter, Kate, was able to meet the president as well.

Sometimes you just have to be persistent, and you cannot take no for an answer. Don’t listen to the naysayers, the people who give you all the reasons why something cannot be done or tell you it’s never been done that way before. I love it when someone tells me something cannot be done, or that nobody has ever done it before. What a challenge! What an opportunity to go where nobody else has ever gone. When you are told no, do not stop and do not give up. Try again and find a new way.

What idea have you stuffed inside your drawer? What could you do to give birth or rebirth to that idea? Today is the day to get started. Don’t allow