Forty years ago, Buzz Aldrin became the second human, minutes after Neil Armstrong, to set foot on a celestial body other than the Earth. The event remains one of mankind’s greatest achievements and was witnessed by the largest worldwide television audience in history. In the years since, millions more have had their Earth-centric perspective unalterably changed by the iconic photograph of Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon, the blackness of space behind him and his fellow explorer and the Eagle reflected in his visor. Describing the alien world he was walking upon, he uttered the words “magnificent desolation.” And as the astronauts later sat in the Eagle, waiting to begin their journey back home, knowing that they were doomed unless every system and part on board worked flawlessly, it was Aldrin who responded to Mission Control’s clearance to take off with the quip, “Roger. Understand. We’re number one on the runway.”

The flight of Apollo 11 made Aldrin one of the most famous persons on our planet, yet few people know the rest of this true American hero’s story. In Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin not only gives us a harrowing first-person account of the lunar landing that came within seconds of failure and the ultimate insider’s view of life as one of the superstars of America’s space program, he also opens up with remarkable candor about his more personal trials–and eventual triumphs–back on Earth. From the glory of being part of the mission that fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the decade was out, Aldrin returned home to an Air Force career stripped of purpose or direction, other than as a public relations tool that NASA put to relentless use in a seemingly nonstop world tour. The twin demons of depression and alcoholism emerged–the first of which Aldrin confronted early and publicly, and the second of which he met with denial until it nearly killed him. He burned through two marriages, his Air Force career came to an inglorious end, and he found himself selling cars for a living when he wasn’t drunkenly wrecking them. Redemption came when he finally embraced sobriety, gained the love of a woman, Lois, who would become the great joy of his life, and dedicated himself to being a tireless advocate for the future of space exploration–not only as a scientific endeavor but also as a thriving commercial enterprise.

These days Buzz Aldrin is enjoying life with an enthusiasm that reminds us how far it is possible for a person to travel, literally and figuratively. As an adventure story, a searing memoir of self-destruction and self-renewal, and as a visionary rallying cry to once again set our course for Mars and beyond, Magnificent Desolation is the thoroughly human story of a genuine hero.


From the Hardcover edition.

1 A JOURNEY for ALL MANKIND Wednesday, July 16, 1969, 6:00 a.m. (EDT) Countdown: T minus three hours, thirty minutes to liftoff. Clear Florida sky.

Elevated 300 feet in the air on an upper platform of Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A, I stood alone on the grating of the towering gantry. A few yards away, loaded with more than 2,000 tons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellant, the giant Saturn V rocket also stood, primed for liftoff as the countdown progressed. Large shards of frost were already falling off its outer skin from the super-chilled liquid oxygen within.

Hours earlier my Apollo 11 crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, and I had enjoyed a predawn steak-and-eggs breakfast--an astronaut tradition--and had gone through an elaborate suiting-up with NASA's equipment team helping us get into our pressurized suits, helmets, gloves, and boots. Along with our Pad Leader, Günter Wendt, a gray-haired man of German descent who had worked on almost every launch since the early days of the Mercury program, the three of us, carrying our portable air-conditioning ventilators as though we were heading off to work with our briefcases, loaded into the courier van for the short drive out to the launchpad.

Slowly we ascended in the gantry elevator, passing red metal grated walkways at various intervals leading to strategic areas of the rocket. Each of us had trained for his entire life leading up to this moment. As a crew, we had worked together for nearly a year, with Neil and I initially on the backup crew for the gutsy Apollo 8 mission, the first to fly around the moon after only one prior mission with the Saturn V, and then with Mike as the prime crew for the Apollo 11 mission. Because of the seating order in the cramped conditions of the Apollo command module--comparable to the interior of a small van in which the three of us would live and work for more than a week--climbing over one another to enter the craft while wearing our spacesuits was next to impossible. So Günter stopped the elevator about three-fourths of the way up, and dropped me off to wait there on the metal grat- ing while he, Neil, and Mike proceeded two more flights up to where the elevator opened at the "white room," the final preparation area leading to the narrow hatch opening to the spacecraft. In less than three and half hours, if all went well, the enormous rocket, with the power of an atomic bomb, would release an engulfing fireball and lumber off the pad, slowly gathering speed as it rose majestically into the sky, launching America's first attempt to land human beings on the moon.

The sun had not yet come up and was barely peeking above the horizon as I stood on the grating and peered through the clear bubble helmet I wore. The only sound I could hear came from my ventilation unit. Looking up and down the coastline, my eyes scanned the beaches for miles along the causeway near Cape Canaveral, where more than a million people had started gathering the night before, trekking in cars, motorcycles, pickup trucks, campers, and large motor homes, inching their way through bumper-to-bumper traffic as they sought the perfect launch viewing location. Already people were filling in every available spot of dry ground, and thousands of boats were anchored on the Indian and Banana rivers near the Cape. Without a good set of binoculars, most of the spectators could not see me, and from my vantage point I could barely see them, but I could see the evidence of them in the flickering campfires that dotted the beaches in the darkness. Everyone knew that something big was about to happen.

Because of the danger of explosion should something go wrong, the area...

 

"An admirable account of an icon of the golden age of space flight."

 

"Space fans, in particular, will cheer."

 

"Aldrin presents a no-holds-barred account of how his celebrity, career and human weaknesses nearly destroyed his life....This inspiring story exhibits Aldrin as a different, perfectly human kind of hero, giving readers a sympathetic look at a man eclipsed by his own legend."

 

"Riveting reading."

 

"Leads the field of new releases.The candid portrayal of his earthly battles--often written with great humor--make this a cut above the rest....Great holiday reading."

 

"Captivating....an engaging first-hand account by one of history's most important explorers."

 

Magnificent Desolation by Buzz Aldrin
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