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Astronauts Come to Earth As Moonwalkers Stories

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 March 2008, 06:00 CST

By Troy Anderson

They're living legends, America's space pioneers who first walked on the moon, and they're telling their individual stories now about their journeys into the outer limits.

Buzz Aldrin, now 78, was born to fly. His father was an aviation pioneer who introduced his son to the skies at age 2. That toddler one day would join Neil Armstrong, the first pair to walk on the moon.

Astronaut Alan Bean was so inspired by the heavens during his trip to the moon that he later resigned from NASA to pursue a lifelong passion for art -- becoming the first person to paint the moon and stars from the perspective of someone who has been to another world.

These men are among the seven surviving of nine who walked on the moon, living historical figures who represent America's victory in the space race.

"There are some people who say when people look back at the 20th century five centuries from now, this is the most important thing they will remember, the beginning of humans leaving the Earth and going somewhere else," he said.

"It's sort of like 1492 when people begin to leave Europe and come to the New World. It changed the dynamics of history and this will, too."

Their rarely told tales of the men behind the Apollo missions are now the focus of "The Wonder of It All," a documentary by Sherman Oaks resident Jeffrey Roth, who interviewed seven of the nine surviving moonwalkers.

"The idea behind the film is that nobody really knows today just who the men are who went to the moon," said Roth, director, executive producer and writer of the documentary.

"I wanted to give people an understanding of who the men in the spacesuits were because everyone thinks they were just some fighter pilots -- when in essence they were highly educated and highly motivated people who were doing something they thought was great for their country."

Exploring human side

As NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary and makes plans to send more astronauts to the moon and even to Mars, Roth's documentary explores the human side of the men behind the six Apollo space missions nearly four decades ago.

Aldrin grew from that youngster in his father's plane to graduate in 1951 with honors from the U.S. Military Academy and flew 66 combat missions in the Korean War. Later, he earned a doctorate in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in manned space rendezvous.

Attracted in part by the work he was doing at MIT, NASA selected Aldrin as one of the first astronauts in 1963.

Aldrin, a Presbyterian, said he took communion before stepping on the moon as a spiritual gesture of appreciation.

"I wanted to have some symbolic ceremony that I could participate in as an individual so I asked if I could get permission from the higher authorities to serve myself communion," Aldrin told the Daily News in an interview at his home.

"At the time, I asked the world to pause for a moment and give thanks in their own individual way for the events of those past few hours."

Since retiring from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and his position as commander of the Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Aldrin has concentrated on advancing human exploration of space.

Aldrin also founded the ShareSpace Foundation, a nonprofit group devoted to promoting space tourism.

"I think we need an exploration step that makes use of the moon on the way to the larger objective of Mars," Aldrin said. "We need to make a commitment to a growing permanence on Mars."

The 76-year-old Bean also was selected as an astronaut in 1963 and, in November 1969, became the fourth man to walk on the moon.

Bean later commanded the second manned mission, Skylab 3, in 1973, remaining in space for 59 days and logging a record-setting 24.4million miles.

Moon dust in paintings

He resigned from NASA in 1981 to become an artist, using real moon dust in his paintings and his NASA hammer to add texture.

"I participated in one of the greatest adventures of humankind and I have recorded it and celebrated it with my paintings," Bean said.

As his module was hurtling back to Earth from the moon, astronaut Edgar Mitchell became engulfed by "a sense of universal connectedness," feeling as if everything was part of a glittering conscious cosmos.

Mitchell, now 77 and living in Lakeworth, Fla., was selected as an astronaut in 1966 and became the sixth man to walk on the moon in 1971 with the Apollo 14 mission.

'Unbelievable sight'

On his return trip to Earth, he had a transformative experience as he saw Earth, the moon and the sun as the spacecraft rotated in a 360-degree panorama.

"It's absolutely a wondrous, unbelievable sight, particularly since the stars are 10 times as bright and 10 times more numerous than you can possibly see from Earth," Mitchell said.

"It was a visceral experience, realizing those were my molecules connected to those stars and that was a real emotional experience -- that ecstasy, the sense of unity and sense of connectedness. I had an overwhelming sense of joy and well-being."

After retiring from the Navy in 1972, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to sponsor research into the nature of consciousness, cosmology and causality. The institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor.

"It's the type of thing when once you have experienced that there is no way of going back," he said. "You have a different view of the universe and you tend to want to live in peace and love and see that everything is connected in a very powerful way."

While a showing of Roth's documentary is set for Thursday, he also is in discussions with various distributors for general release.

"They all had this boyhood dream of being like Buck Rogers at a time when the word 'astronaut' hadn't even been invented," Roth said of the moonwalkers.

"They started an adventure that we don't know where it's going to end yet."

Source: Daily News; Los Angeles, Calif.

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