Decked out in a black T-shirt featuring the famous shot of himself standing on the moon with the lunar module reflected in his visor, he grooved to the recording highlighting his bold step into rapping.
“It took us four days riding on a rocket/ to set foot for the very first time./ I’m going to tell you about the meaning of it all./ We came in peace for all mankind.”
Aldrin’s stop at the bookstore at The Greene in Beavercreek came just three days before the anniversary of the historic moon landing on July 20, 1969.
Ron Kaplan, executive director of the hall of fame, led a bookstore question- and-answer period with Aldrin, who discussed his new book, “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.”
Aldrin said he uttered those words — magnificent desolation — on the moon to sum up the experience of what it was like to step on the surface of the celestial body people had looked at for centuries.
“What a magnificent tribute to the advancement of our species, humankind,” he said. “But we’re here but I can’t think of a more lifeless spot that I’ve ever seen on earth.”
He called the landing with Armstrong the highpoint of his life. And he received a big laugh when he added, “Landing is more important than walking around outside, despite what everyone wants to think. Landing opens the door to do everything else that has never been done before.”
The book offers a riveting account of the lunar landing as well as Aldrin’s private struggles with depression and alcoholism.
He carries in his pocket a 30-year coin marking his three decades of sobriety.
When the audience applauded, he told them, “You don’t have to applaud. I did what I had to do to save my life.” His said his mother committed suicide the year before he went to the moon.
Aldrin has become a strong proponent for colonization of Mars and he’s taking traditional and nontraditional routes to reaching a generation of youth who were not alive to remember how it felt as a nation to achieve President Kennedy’s dream to get to the moon by the end of that decade.
“Worldwide we’re not doing too well in science, technology, engineering and math,” said Aldrin, who earned a doctorate from MIT in astronautics.
He wants kids to get excited about space exploration and has tried to reach them through their the hip-hop single and video, as well as children’s books, “Look to the Stars” and “Reach for the Moon.”
He’s even on Twitter at “therealbuzz.”
Nathan Teeters, 11, of Piqua, among about 20 members of the Piqua chapter of the Young Astronauts — a national program Aldrin helped start years ago — asked the astronaut if it was hard adjusting to the low gravity on the moon.
It wasn’t hard but it was like walking in slow motion, said Aldrin, an Air Force veteran whose father was commandant of the Air Service Engineering School at McCook Field in Dayton, which evolved into the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson.
After he spoke and before signing books, Aldrin peeled off the black T-shirt Aldrin wore over his dress shirt and tie and it was auctioned off for $600 to a memorabilia collector.
“It’s a bargain,” Phil Mullins, 49, of Indianapolis, said before Aldrin autographed the shirt and posed for a photo with him. The money will go to the Miami Valley Literacy Council.
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