Haifa — On July 20, 1969, one of man’s greatest achievements took place when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon as he descended from his lunar module. He was followed some 20 minutes later by the co-pilot of the module Buzz Aldrin.
The third member of the lunar team, fellow astronaut Michael Collins, was orbiting the moon in the expedition’s command module. Of the trio, only Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin are still living.
Collins is now 85 years old and Buzz Aldrin is 86.
Neil Armstrong died in 2012 at 82.
In July, 2007, Armstrong made his only trip to Israel.
During his visit to Haifa, local children were given the opportunity to ask Armstrong questions about his historic flight.
This July, a sprightly Buzz Aldrin was also in Haifa, as the guest of Israel’s Institute of Technology, the Technion. Despite his venerable age, Aldrin is the chancellor of the International Space University (ISU), whose summer program is held at the Technion.
Aldrin is now looking far further than the moon.
He wants to see man having a permanent presence on planet Mars.
He thinks that man could settle on the red planet by 2040.
Mars could, in Aldrin’s view, become our next home.
To this end, he founded the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute in Florida. Aldrin, who has a PhD in astronautics, likes to point out that his mother was born in the same year that the Wright brothers made their first man-powered flight.
“In this short time just look at what man has achieved in space.”
Aldrin, a West Point graduate and former fighter pilot, received his PhD from MIT. The subject of his doctoral thesis was manned rendezvous in space. The rendezvous methods that he developed in his thesis are very much in use today and have earned him the nickname “Dr. Rendezvous.”
In 1963, he was accepted into NASA as an astronaut and became known mainly for his record-breaking Gemini 12 spacewalk (1966) and the Apollo 11 moon landing (1969).
“We were given an opportunity to land on the moon, and the opportunity became a landmark event that changed the history of mankind,” Aldrin said last month at the Technion.
“Mankind has managed to set foot in a new and completely different place. Four hundred thousand people were involved in the success of this mission and a half billion people were watching us making history.
“When we returned from there we were greeted as heroes, but the world cheered not only us but what we represented — conquering the impossible.”
