WASHINGTON — Those astronauts who flew to the moon are some tough old coots.
Silver-haired but still full of swagger, seven of the Apollo astronauts paid a visit to NASA’s headquarters Monday to offer their thoughts on the 40th anniversary of humanity’s first steps on the moon. But they didn’t indulge in much happy reflection, instead giving the American public and politicians a piece of their minds.
Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, a member of the Apollo 11 crew and the second man to set foot on the lunar surface, and his fellow astronauts — Walt Cunningham, Jim Lovell, David Scott, Charles Duke, Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan — appeared on a stage, displaying the pugnacity of space men and fighter jocks that Tom Wolfe famously called “the right stuff.”
“No cuss words?” one of them muttered before the conference started. They mostly followed that rule, but otherwise they argued, joked and called it like they saw it.
The international space station? “Almost a white elephant,” Lovell, 81, the commander of the nearly disastrous Apollo 13 mission, said as he questioned the wisdom of plans to deactivate the station in 2016.
NASA spending less than 1 percent of the federal budget? “That’s idiotic, in my opinion,” said Cunningham, 77, a crew member on Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission to be successfully launched.
Life on Mars? “There may be life on Mars. If there is, it’s for damn sure we’d better go there and look at it. … We’ll bring it there. Whether it’s germs and leftover urine bags, or whatever it is,” said Aldrin, 79.
Several astronauts said they were surprised that mankind hadn’t sent a human to Mars by now. NASA’s plan is to return to the moon by 2020; a Mars flight would be much harder.
Cunningham said there wasn’t the same desire for “dangerous adventure” as there was in former years: “We have allowed our country to turn into a risk-averse society. It’s reflected in NASA, it’s reflected in everything we do today,” he said.
Later in the day, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins — the three Apollo 11 crew members — met with President Barack Obama at the Oval Office. Obama praised the pioneers for their accomplishments and described them as “genuine American heroes.”
“I think that all of us recall the moment in which mankind finally was untethered from this planet and was able to explore the stars, the moment in which we had one of our own step on the moon and leave that imprint that is there to this day,” Obama said.
“I still recall sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders when those capsules would land in the middle of the Pacific,” said Obama, who was born and raised in Hawaii. “And I remember waving American flags and my grandfather telling me that the Apollo mission was an example of how Americans can do anything they put their minds to.”
Monday’s celebrations in Washington included a panel at the Newseum and a reception at the National Air and Space Museum.
“We felt like we had a job to do,” Aldrin said at the news conference at NASA headquarters. “Were there emotions involved in that? No. We were trying to make a successful landing. You’re not worrying. You’re not fearful.”
Cernan, the last man on the moon — he flew his mission in 1972 — disagreed. He said that during his lunar landing he could see Earth the whole time out the front window. “If that isn’t emotion, then I don’t know what is,” he said.
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