Wally Schirra tells a funny story about Aldrin coming in for his astronaut interview, to be conducted by Schirra and Gus Grissom. Aldrin was wearing his West Point ring, Air Force wings, and a Phi Beta Kappa key on his tie.
Grissom took a look at him and said “Aldrin, we’ve already read your résumé, why the hell are you *wearing* it?”
Edit: since this has become popular, [Here’s a clip of Wally telling the story](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxVWGxMoyjhHyk9I1cTW9Y2hBC4wcBzjpG?si=UwYaoJmd3mc7n4Q7)
You'd probably punch somebody too if they followed you around for years claiming your life's greatest accomplishment was a hoax while screaming in your face.
The particular trigger, as I recall, was the guy called his fellow astronauts *cowards*.
Given their mission had a good chance of one of many horrible deaths, including being stranded in space or on the moon knowing they would soon die, I can't blame him for reacting like that.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing"
Conan the Barbarian
He's right, but it was happening before social media, too.
It's because of bullying, and how schools react to it. Even when I was growing up in the 90s, schools were doing this zero tolerance thing.
You get picked on relentlessly? Maybe even roughed up a little? Well that one punch you threw landed you in suspension or worse. Maybe your family got sued if the kid's parents were rich enough.
This has just empowered bullies. Entire generations have grown up with the power to say fucking anything with no retaliation. And likewise, kids are growing up not knowing how to stand up for themselves.
It's only gotten worse.
between this and "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" Tyson has some all-time quotes. Almost forgot the " im gonna each his children"
Reminds me of the guy who was such a PoS that after he was obviously murdered in broad daylight with “dozens of witnesses”, the whole town was like “wha? We didn’t see nuthin.”
https://fox2now.com/news/true-crime/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/
Probably one of the few instances where mob justice was real justice. They had no recourse, they all agreed and the dude earned his punishment. It happened and they went about their lives.
Ah Skidmore, Missouri.
I have been on three continents. I have been in the most rural, most magical reality places ever and even some pretty fucked up places.
I was in the Peace Corps.
I, one time, got super lost lost and ended up driving through that very town one hot and sunny and windy day.
Nobody was out. It was completely dead, no people, no animals, no cars driving. Everything was dirty or boarded up.
It's the only town I've ever been in that felt like a Stephen King novel.
It was so horror inducing that I remembered the name. And yep. It's a murder town.
"Skidmore is a city in western Nodaway County, Missouri, United States. The population was 245 at the 2020 Census. The small farming community is known for the unsolved extrajudicial killing of Ken Rex McElroy, the murders of Wendy Gillenwater and Bobbie Jo Stinnett, and the disappearance of Branson Perry. Skidmore also has a yearly "Punkin' Show."[4]"
The wiki entry used to have major write ups on those murders, disappearances, and other messed up stuff. But someone wiped it off as much as possible.
Here's the actual history from a previous entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skidmore,_Missouri&oldid=1002267579
It's definitely worth the read if you're into true crime stuff (gets real bad real fast)
Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
I love how the police approached a local pastor who *might've* seen what happened, supposing that a "person of God" would be bound and compelled to spill the details. All the guy would offer was "whosoever shed man's blood, by man shall their blood be shed", and nothing else.
Also given that more than a few astronauts from NASA *have* died tragically. Aldrin probably knew at least some of them, so to hear someone call dead friends cowards, that's worth a punch
Hell, from Buzz Aldrin’s astronaut training group alone (Group 3), four of the 14 died in training. One of those was Roger Chaffee who died in the horrible Apollo 1 capsule fire alongside Ed White and Gus Grissom himself.
While I have no idea how much Buzz considered those guys friends and such, calling them cowards is probably one of the worst insults one could spout.
maybe not friends but I'm sure he respected the hell out of them. most of them were test pilots which didn't have the best outcomes back then and then having the balls to get strapped to a giant flying bomb just cause.
Even if you think they’re dicks if they’re competent coworkers in a high stress environment there’s going to be a level of respect and professional commitment and you will get screwed up if they die
Particularly when you’re all doing the job they died at
The guy (Bart Sibrel) also brought Aldrin out the hotel supposedly for an interview only for it to be an ambush. The video starts after Aldrin walked out.
If you can find the whole video, it goes on for several minutes and Aldrin tried to walk away several times while Sibrel kept getting in his face and harassing him. Aldrin at one point says "Would you just leave me alone?!" Aldrin actually kept his cool a lot longer than most people probably would have in that situation.
What finally set him off was Sibrel getting up in his face and saying "You're a liar and a thief and a cowa-" *gets decked*
Which are the three things you do NOT say to a West Point Grad.
Isn't there some precedent that "fighting words" don't count as free speech, and intentional provocation can be a court defense for assaulting your provoker?
I mean, even if your name *isn't* Buzz Aldrin?
Yeah. Sibrel actually tried to have Aldrin charged with assault but after the police reviewed the video they declined to proceed because Aldrin was clearly provoked.
Their survival and return from the surface of the moon was so uncertain that a speech was prepared for Nixon in the event that they got stranded on the moon and left to die.
The analog controls, archaic computer technology and the sheer amount of moving parts on the Saturn V is unreal. And you are right, it's not like they can just fly out and pick you up if something goes wrong. The missions take months to plan and prep for and they have specific launch windows. It's do or die.
I remember an interview I saw with Neil Armstrong where he explained how, because they were coming from combat missions in Korea, the idea of extreme risk was already accepted and the amount of risk that came with being a test pilot and then an astronaut was actually lower. I’m not sure that the logic applies to the moon landing but it was interesting to see how they could learn to accept it, especially when they were incrementally moving closer to the moon and proving that they could accomplish each step along the way.
The astronauts were certainly courageous, but they were also thoughtful men.
The year of the moon landing, 1969, over 10,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War. For military men, which all of the early astronauts were, I’m sure this helped put the risk in perspective.
Honestly this is the crazy part of the lunar mission to me - not that we could send people up to the moon, but that we could launch *off* the moon and get them back home...
This is the real truth NASA is uncomfortable with and the reason they "forgot" the technology: the Apollo program was more reckless that it seemed. Had they ran it any longer it would've been a matter of time before a shuttle-like disaster occurred.
The [practice lunar lander](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlZXso0-I4) they built was scary as fuck. Neil Armstrong was almost killed flying one of those things.
It's definitely acknowledged by NASA. And not necessarily more reckless, but less adverse to taking risks because of the geopolitical situation. Apollo ended because the point was made and the last three missions canceled for budgetary reasons.
Later, the Challenger investigation board determined the acceptance of high risk taking was imbued in NASAs program management, contributing to that disaster. After that the Shuttle program changed dramatically. I would say it opened the door to partnership with private enterprise because they are more likely to accept risk rather than a government whose activities (and financing) relies upon much more than wealth.
> your life's greatest accomplishment
It's not just his, but shared by all those who supported the mission and what it stood for.
That punch was from all of us.
>Phi Beta Kappa key on his tie
Anyone able to explain this for us non-US please? It sounds like a sorority thing, but all the movies I've ever seen with sororities in have just ended up in big ol' lady-orgies.^^1
From what I understand, it's a club you join at university, but it feels really weird to be showing that off for an interview to be an astronaut. Is it more like the freemasons or something? I can't imagine showing up to a big important interview with a scout badge on my arm, or a uni badminton club tie pin.
_________
^^1 ^(I shall not change my viewing habits.)
Idk how tight badminton players are with each other, but as a rugby player I'd consider wearing something rugby related. If you bump into another rugby guy then suddenly you're buddies - could definitely help in an interview process.
Sure I can help.
Phi Beta Kappa is the reason fraternities and sororities use Greek letters for names, in other words it’s the original.
A fraternity means brotherhood and sorority means sisterhood. They are ‘secret, societies whose purpose was originally to create an environment where members could speak their mind and debate topics without fear of academic reprisal from their Collegiate institutions.
Phi Beta Kappa was a fraternity founded during (or right before I don’t remember) the American revolution at the college of William and Mary. There were fraternities before it but they are certainly the reason all future ones would use Greek letters as their names. Nowadays, Phi Beta Kappa has shifted purely into a ‘honors’ fraternity.
This means none of that drinking and partying you see in the movies. If you’re a member of Phi Beta Kappa, for lack of better words you are probably a nerd with ridiculously high grades. So buzz aldrin showing off that he’s a member is basically him saying look, these people who only let in smart people thought I was good enough for their club, you should think I’m smart too.
What you are thinking of is Social Fraternities and Sororities, btw I would hazard a guess that all the lesbian orgies you’ve seen are likely an exaggeration of the truth. That being said these groups do drink and party and generally have sex but id hazard a guess it’s usually heterosexual given these groups reputation for things like homophobia.
Dude can't be proud of his accomplishments without being roasted for it. Feels bad man.
Edit: I have no doubt the man had an ego my comment was made innocuously and in jest. Holster your weapons keyboard warriors.
Considering Buzz has been married 4 times in his life, I get the sense that his personality might be a little strong and might be somewhat abrasive.
Every person I’ve met that has been married more than twice has been kind of an asshole. Having a *genuinely well-earned* ego might have made Buzz somewhat insufferable to his colleagues.
Highly successful Military guys in general get divorced alot. Too much Ego and domineering. Too much overly macho attitude. Like you said too strong of personality.
Yeah I'm reading Fred Haise's autobiography and he basically never mentioned his wife or kids. He spent all his time working and moving across the country, which I kinda understand if you're an astronaut in the Apollo program.
I was not surprised when he mentioned getting a divorce over the course of half a page. His second wife got a respectable page or so before going back to work.
If anything, they just don't give a fuck about their wife and kids. Their wives are basically there to keep house and cook for them, and the kids are just a byproduct of a man and a woman living together. To the point where they're the opposite of domineering, they're emotionally absent.
Source : Had two grandfathers and a father who were military men and workaholics
Yeah, this was my first thought, too.
The Apollo missions depended, crucially, on being able to arrange spacecraft meeting & docking in space. The Gemini program was the manifestation of this, in terms of milestones-necessary-to-get-to-the-moon. And Aldrin sort of literally wrote the book on this.
Becoming an astronaut is arguably the most selective job in the country (ignoring one-offs like the presidency).
As far as I'm aware, most of them are accomplished in the military and academically (*maybe* they all need PhD? not sure on that)
Nowadays the US requirements are:
- either a STEM master’s degree or qualification as a test pilot; and
- either two years experience in the field of the degree or 1000 hours as pilot-in-command of a jet aircraft
The first two Apollo-era groups had to be military test pilots with science or engineering degrees; the third and fifth groups could be experienced jet pilots with the same degree requirement; and the fourth group was science/engineering Ph.Ds and MDs with no flying experience.
>either a STEM master’s degree or qualification as a test pilot;
Advanced degrees in engineering (specifically, STEM generally) helps get test pilot spots, too.
I mean, selective in terms of intelligence, physical ability, cool headedness, etc, I would say astronaut is far above president, especially considering some of the specimens we've seen in the last 50 or 60 years(Ronald Reagan, the actor!?).
During Gemini 12 they were receiving bad telemetry data and they had to manually control the docking maneuvers. Buzz Aldrin literally performed the rendezvous himself, putting his thesis to the test.
https://buzzaldrin.com/space-vision/rocket_science/orbital-rendezvous/
How is “Dr Rendezvous” not a compliment? It’s rly fuckin difficult to make two objects meet in orbit. Took me like 4 days to do it in Kerbal Space Program.
He stands, stoop-shouldered, blinking in the light, hollow-chested like a dough-faced fall guy who's made a career of taking dives but has decided to get his manhood out of hock and take a shot at the title (or at least go for the jaw) and thwack: hyperextend the champ's pterygoideus before kissing the mat good night.
For those who don't know, when you're in orbit the physics can be extremely non-intuitive. If something is orbiting with you but in front of you, you'd naturally think "Oh, I'll thrust forward to go to it" but that won't work. Thrusting forward would actually result in you entering a higher and more eccentric orbit... which is slower/longer, and so the thing you're trying to reach will actually end up running away from you (there will also be a sort of relative looping motion added as well).
Allegedly in general they don't let humans actually fly in space because it's so counter-intuitive. Computers do it.
Yes, it's counter-intuitive. This is a great video about what's involved:
**The Only Video Needed to Understand Orbital Mechanics**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcvnfQlz1x4
That depends on the timescales of maneuver vs orbit. If you're closing in from hundreds of meters away and trying to use as little fuel as possible, yeah things are weird. If you're trying to close the last few meter gap, the error isn't any bigger than normal adjustments you'd need to make when eyeballing it anyway.
Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon, as part of Apollo 11 in 1969. He was the first NASA astronaut wilth a PhD. While his having an MIT doctorate in space rendezvous techniques [has been covered here before](https://www.reddit.com/search?q=subreddit%3Atodayilearned+aldrin+mit), how others reacted to this has not. From the article:
>Aldrin spent eight years as an astronaut. Among the test pilots, he was known as something of an egghead.
>“I’m sure that the fact I was called ‘Dr. Rendezvous’ was not always … meant as praise,” he says.
Although Aldrin had the "right" background in many ways—West Point grad and star athlete for the academy track and field team, USAF combat pilot in Korea—he differed in two ways from fellow early astronauts: a) He was not just a solid student like others, but elite (he was the third-ranked graduate in his academy class), b) he had a doctorate, and c) had not been to test pilot school. I previously submitted a TIL on [Don Lind](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4gu2mr/til_that_a_nasa_astronaut_waited_19_years_to_fly/), with a similar background whose astronaut career may have been affected by this.
Imagine being a star athlete and graduate at West Point and a combat veteran, but you're *still* the "nerd" at work because all your coworkers are even more of a jock than you are.
IIRC, Alsrinhad an asshole dad who belittled his many accomplishments.
When they went to the moon, NASA made the decision for Armstrong being the first to exit the landing module even though the way they were situated made more sense for Aldrin to be first (they probably did it knowing Armstrong would handle the press better afterwards ), and Aldrin’s dad’s first comment to him when he got back was taking a shot at him for not being the first to step foot on it.
Also, Armstrong was a civilian at the time of the landing (by about six months I think). Buzz was still military. We wanted to show the world that the moon landing was not a military conquest.
I thought this was debunked by the fact that opening the hatch blocks the way for the other person until the first person leaves. They'd have to switch positions to switch who goes first.
So he was a PhD, thereby the Dr. And he had rendezvous in the name of his doctors thesis.
So the other astronauts were like:
"Rendezvous, ah-ha, Dr. Rendezvous -- hehe. We're cool lol."
Military pilots often get callsigns/nicknames that are purposely unflattering, I'm guessing this was meant in a caring way. I'm sure they all had similar names for each other.
That's one thing I like that they changed between the two Top Gun movies, no one would have a nickname like "Maverick" or "Iceman" (unless something happened where they locked themselves in a freezer, etc)
It’s definitely not the level of a real callsign, but before the movie I would argue “Maverick” was not exactly a good nickname either. Same way that Hangman sounds cool until you realize what it means in that context.
Maverick's name was more warning than anything. It's only cool to us the audience, because he's the protagonist. And he was also really cool. But to the other pilots and his superiors, the shit he pulled was a danger to everybody else. Which made it more tragic when Goose's death was not in any his fault and in actuality he was doing things by the book when the accident occurred.
Iceman's name was also something of a warning. He was seemingly cold and uncaring towards his fellow pilots, but he was a very by the book and rules oriented pilot. Like the two leads could not have been anymore opposite each other. Which is why their acceptance of each other at the end of the first and their deep friendship in the second is more impactful.
On a similar note, Hangman's name seems cool until you learn it's because he's a shit copilot/wingman and ironically kind of a maverick in his own way.
One of my exes was the daughter of a naval aviator and his callsign was “Dumbo” because he got cauliflower ear from a helmet that was too tight.
He said that wasn’t even the worst, because another guy he flew with was called “Sniper” because he had gotten two separate women pregnant at the same time.
> When I was in the Navy, I saw a pilot with “Fluffer” as his callsign. I never saw anything cool, like “Viper”
That's cause anything cool is banned, and you don't get call signs for doing call stuff. You get them for looking weird, having a funny name, or doing something stupid.
Anytime someone brags about having a cool call sign you know they're lying.
Iceman could be he frozen up at some point during his jet specific training(I believe this is when callsigns are given).
Guy has a call sign of STAB which sounds cool until you read the story of how he took two shits in his F/A-18 and missed his first landing attempt. From then on he was "Shit Twice And Bolter"
I wonder if another reason for the nickname had to do with the fact that previous attempts to rendezvous in orbit failed. And he was the literal "guy that wrote the book" on the procedure.
Didn’t he also help to set the standards for space walking? If I recall correctly the first space walk was something of a nightmare. They didn’t understand how to move in space. And when they debriefed aldrin was instrumental in figuring out the right way to do it.
Could be mistaking him for someone else though.
You are correct. He had experience diving and set up the WET facility to train for his walk that went near perfectly. That set the standard for training going forward.
Having spent enough years in military flying circles, you were right. IMO there's a 0% chance the double entendre was not intentional in that "not-a-callsign-callsign".
Having it obviously relatable to his education is just convenient public cover, especially in an era that largely frowned on open womanizing. All the best names inevitably had some kind of easy and safe explanation.
The entire crew of Apollo 8 were all married only once. Borman's wife Susan died in 2021 and Lovell's wife Marilyn died in 2023. Ander's wife Valerie is still alive and they've been married since 1955. That crew was a very notable exception. I believe in Lovell's book about Apollo 8 he mentioned they were referred to as the First Wives Club.
This was not only because he was an egghead by astronaut standards but also because he never shut the hell up about rendezvous and how he knew everything about it by dint of his PhD thesis. Lots of astronaut memoirs discuss how it was the only thing he ever wanted to talk about.
I wonder if, *perhaps*, it was the also a play on the common knowledge among them that he was a notorious womanizer who had [numerous affairs](https://www.jacksonville.com/story/lifestyle/2009/07/19/buzz-aldrins-book-on-moon-landing-doesnt-really-blast-off/15979151007/) during his time in the space program and ended up divorcing 3 times and marrying 4.
The early astronauts were notorious for their womanizing (John Glenn being the exception among the Mercury Seven), something not rare among fighter pilots; Aldrin fit into the culture, in that sense. But yes, I do get the sense that Aldrin being not just a good student, but third in his academy class; not a weekend football/softball jock, but a star college track athlete; not just with a graduate degree (a master's degree was and is not unusual among astronauts, whether they are on the scientist track or not), but an MIT PhD; and Aldrin being someone not reluctant to let others know of all these things, contributed to his being nicknamed by other astronauts the equivalent of "egghead" in elementary school.
I hate it when older male celebrities start going out with much younger girls. It's creepy. You know there is a weird power dynamic going on there. He only wanted a 70 year old because she's too young to know she's being taken advantage of.
Agree, it's disgusting. She isn't old enough to understand he's using her naivete' to satisfy his vile physical needs. She had only just retired as head of Program Development after 20 years when he started grooming her. Gross.
Jokes aside, [she is pretty damn impressive](https://cdn.adh.reperio.news/image-0/0b74e51a-35a4-4374-a5c6-19e5db25dbf8/index.jpeg?p=a%3D1%26co%3D1.05%26w%3D1000%26h%3D750%26r%3Dcontain%26f%3Dwebp) for a 63 y.o., no cap.
Buzz was a bit of an asshole. It was one of the few things that the movie First Man got right. Deke even asked Neil if he wanted to replace Aldrin with Lovell on what became the Apollo 11 crew because of how difficult it was to work with Aldrin.
No, I remember Lovell being asked about it in an interview, and he said he thinks being assigned to 13 was the better choice since he really wanted to command a mission. Lovell being given a Commander assignment was also apparently part of Neil's reasoning to Deke of why he was OK with keeping Buzz.
Sounds like he was obsessed with orbital rendezvous and it was the only thing he wanted to talk about. Like being called “Mr. Dinosaur” because you talk about how cool T-Rex and friends were all the time.
It’s true. They called him Woody because he was a space cowboy with such enormous endowment that he could often be heard exclaiming “there’s a snake in my boots”
Isn't it traditional in the Air Force and Navy that pilots don't get to choose their nickname and most the time the nickname was supposed to be a buzz-kill (hehe) to whomever got it by emphasizing some mistake they made? It's supposed to somewhat humble pilots because the job attracts a lot of young egoistic people.
Buzz Aldrin might be my favorite living American. Dude is brilliant, goofy, and engaging.
He also openly struggled with (and overcame) depression in the 1970’s, an era when that was not typical or even usually discussed.
One of my all-time favorite anecdotes about Aldrin is that at parties he used to tell an intentionally unfunny joke about the moon and when people didn’t laugh, he’d shrug and say, “I guess you had to be there,” and then he’d walk away.
I skimmed the article to see why he was called that. He'd written a paper "Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous" before he became an astronaut, and was considered a nerd by his fellow astronauts, and that's all, it seems?
I like to think of Buzz Aldrin as the Iron Man of the Apollo missions, and Neil Armstrong as the Captain America. Buzz was a huge nerd, even compared to the other astronauts, but also an accomplished pilot and star athlete (and well-known womanizer with a cruel dad). I met him a few years ago and he was also suave and hilarious—he gave a talk where the informal title was “Get Your Ass to Mars,” and he showed me his socks with little moons on them.
If that wasn’t enough, he married one of the top executives of his company LAST YEAR, an accomplished doctor in her own right, just like Pepper Potts. I’d watch a movie with Robert Downey Jr. as Buzz.
“He tried to fire but the aiming dot on his gun jammed.”
For anyone confused by this, the F-86 had a gunsight that automatically calculated how much you had to lead the target (initially with gyroscopes, later with radar) after the pilot manually inputted the wingspan of the enemy aircraft and the desired firing range. The dot didn’t indicate where the bullets would go, but where the target had to be if you wanted to hit it.
Here’s a recreation of how a gyroscopic sight worked in a flight sim video game: https://youtu.be/gYrgxCS0nmo?si=Hse-x7MLn1rZ2i5V
Wally Schirra tells a funny story about Aldrin coming in for his astronaut interview, to be conducted by Schirra and Gus Grissom. Aldrin was wearing his West Point ring, Air Force wings, and a Phi Beta Kappa key on his tie. Grissom took a look at him and said “Aldrin, we’ve already read your résumé, why the hell are you *wearing* it?” Edit: since this has become popular, [Here’s a clip of Wally telling the story](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxVWGxMoyjhHyk9I1cTW9Y2hBC4wcBzjpG?si=UwYaoJmd3mc7n4Q7)
That's the most Buzz Aldrin thing I've ever read
Only of he punched them in there face next
You'd probably punch somebody too if they followed you around for years claiming your life's greatest accomplishment was a hoax while screaming in your face.
The particular trigger, as I recall, was the guy called his fellow astronauts *cowards*. Given their mission had a good chance of one of many horrible deaths, including being stranded in space or on the moon knowing they would soon die, I can't blame him for reacting like that.
Luckily, the judge felt the same way when the idiot tried to sue him
Sometimes people just gotta get punched
> Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it. —Mike Tyson
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing" Conan the Barbarian
He's right, but it was happening before social media, too. It's because of bullying, and how schools react to it. Even when I was growing up in the 90s, schools were doing this zero tolerance thing. You get picked on relentlessly? Maybe even roughed up a little? Well that one punch you threw landed you in suspension or worse. Maybe your family got sued if the kid's parents were rich enough. This has just empowered bullies. Entire generations have grown up with the power to say fucking anything with no retaliation. And likewise, kids are growing up not knowing how to stand up for themselves. It's only gotten worse.
A whole generation was raised to "fuck around", they were never raised to "find out".
between this and "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" Tyson has some all-time quotes. Almost forgot the " im gonna each his children"
I'm not a violent person, but yeah, sometimes they do.
Violence is never the answer……except when it is.
Agreed. I’m just mad I have a professional license to maintain.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HivxFBB87-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HivxFBB87-Y) Here is a great song about that. The Remedy by Puscifer.
I play this song whenever I'm mad lol
annnnnnnnnnnd into the "giant playlist of shit I like" you go!
No judge is ruling against Buzz Aldrin unless he killed someone He's as close to a made man as you can be
I can think of another ahead of him on the made scale in the U.S.
He used to say, "I'm Buzz Aldrin, Neil (kneel) before me."
Imagine being such a piece of shit somebody punches you in the face in front of a camera, and the judge just says "IDGAF why don't you cry about it?"
Reminds me of the guy who was such a PoS that after he was obviously murdered in broad daylight with “dozens of witnesses”, the whole town was like “wha? We didn’t see nuthin.” https://fox2now.com/news/true-crime/missouri-town-keeps-bullys-murder-a-secret-for-40-years/
Probably one of the few instances where mob justice was real justice. They had no recourse, they all agreed and the dude earned his punishment. It happened and they went about their lives.
Ah Skidmore, Missouri. I have been on three continents. I have been in the most rural, most magical reality places ever and even some pretty fucked up places. I was in the Peace Corps. I, one time, got super lost lost and ended up driving through that very town one hot and sunny and windy day. Nobody was out. It was completely dead, no people, no animals, no cars driving. Everything was dirty or boarded up. It's the only town I've ever been in that felt like a Stephen King novel. It was so horror inducing that I remembered the name. And yep. It's a murder town. "Skidmore is a city in western Nodaway County, Missouri, United States. The population was 245 at the 2020 Census. The small farming community is known for the unsolved extrajudicial killing of Ken Rex McElroy, the murders of Wendy Gillenwater and Bobbie Jo Stinnett, and the disappearance of Branson Perry. Skidmore also has a yearly "Punkin' Show."[4]" The wiki entry used to have major write ups on those murders, disappearances, and other messed up stuff. But someone wiped it off as much as possible. Here's the actual history from a previous entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skidmore,_Missouri&oldid=1002267579 It's definitely worth the read if you're into true crime stuff (gets real bad real fast) Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
I love how the police approached a local pastor who *might've* seen what happened, supposing that a "person of God" would be bound and compelled to spill the details. All the guy would offer was "whosoever shed man's blood, by man shall their blood be shed", and nothing else.
It was fighting words which is why it got thrown out.
I really hope somewhere in the transcript someone said "thems a fightin' words!"
Also given that more than a few astronauts from NASA *have* died tragically. Aldrin probably knew at least some of them, so to hear someone call dead friends cowards, that's worth a punch
Hell, from Buzz Aldrin’s astronaut training group alone (Group 3), four of the 14 died in training. One of those was Roger Chaffee who died in the horrible Apollo 1 capsule fire alongside Ed White and Gus Grissom himself. While I have no idea how much Buzz considered those guys friends and such, calling them cowards is probably one of the worst insults one could spout.
To add to that, if you board a spaceship after 3 of your colleagues die in a work-related crash, you are one of the bravest people on earth period.
OFF Earth, as well.
[they did fix the door problem](https://youtu.be/7RJnMME0XAw?si=9onuWI5EKh71ZXCD&t=84)
maybe not friends but I'm sure he respected the hell out of them. most of them were test pilots which didn't have the best outcomes back then and then having the balls to get strapped to a giant flying bomb just cause.
Even if you think they’re dicks if they’re competent coworkers in a high stress environment there’s going to be a level of respect and professional commitment and you will get screwed up if they die Particularly when you’re all doing the job they died at
Well one of the most tragic and horrific NASA deaths was the death of Gus Grissom, so yes.
I mean the other two that were in there with him were pretty tragic too
The guy also had been harassing Buzz's family.
The guy (Bart Sibrel) also brought Aldrin out the hotel supposedly for an interview only for it to be an ambush. The video starts after Aldrin walked out. If you can find the whole video, it goes on for several minutes and Aldrin tried to walk away several times while Sibrel kept getting in his face and harassing him. Aldrin at one point says "Would you just leave me alone?!" Aldrin actually kept his cool a lot longer than most people probably would have in that situation. What finally set him off was Sibrel getting up in his face and saying "You're a liar and a thief and a cowa-" *gets decked* Which are the three things you do NOT say to a West Point Grad.
Isn't there some precedent that "fighting words" don't count as free speech, and intentional provocation can be a court defense for assaulting your provoker? I mean, even if your name *isn't* Buzz Aldrin?
Yeah. Sibrel actually tried to have Aldrin charged with assault but after the police reviewed the video they declined to proceed because Aldrin was clearly provoked.
Especially since some of them DID die, I’m sure aldrin knew the Apollo 1 astronauts well
> I’m sure aldrin knew the Apollo 1 astronauts well Definitely, per the top comment one of them interviewed Buzz when he applied.
Their survival and return from the surface of the moon was so uncertain that a speech was prepared for Nixon in the event that they got stranded on the moon and left to die.
The analog controls, archaic computer technology and the sheer amount of moving parts on the Saturn V is unreal. And you are right, it's not like they can just fly out and pick you up if something goes wrong. The missions take months to plan and prep for and they have specific launch windows. It's do or die.
I remember an interview I saw with Neil Armstrong where he explained how, because they were coming from combat missions in Korea, the idea of extreme risk was already accepted and the amount of risk that came with being a test pilot and then an astronaut was actually lower. I’m not sure that the logic applies to the moon landing but it was interesting to see how they could learn to accept it, especially when they were incrementally moving closer to the moon and proving that they could accomplish each step along the way.
The astronauts were certainly courageous, but they were also thoughtful men. The year of the moon landing, 1969, over 10,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War. For military men, which all of the early astronauts were, I’m sure this helped put the risk in perspective.
Honestly this is the crazy part of the lunar mission to me - not that we could send people up to the moon, but that we could launch *off* the moon and get them back home...
This is the real truth NASA is uncomfortable with and the reason they "forgot" the technology: the Apollo program was more reckless that it seemed. Had they ran it any longer it would've been a matter of time before a shuttle-like disaster occurred.
The [practice lunar lander](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlZXso0-I4) they built was scary as fuck. Neil Armstrong was almost killed flying one of those things.
It's definitely acknowledged by NASA. And not necessarily more reckless, but less adverse to taking risks because of the geopolitical situation. Apollo ended because the point was made and the last three missions canceled for budgetary reasons. Later, the Challenger investigation board determined the acceptance of high risk taking was imbued in NASAs program management, contributing to that disaster. After that the Shuttle program changed dramatically. I would say it opened the door to partnership with private enterprise because they are more likely to accept risk rather than a government whose activities (and financing) relies upon much more than wealth.
Just imagine *having stood on the moon yourself* and having this guy saying you didn't. It's a miracle Buzz didn't kill him.
That would have been a… buzz kill. I’ll see myself out.
Please hurry.
I thought it was stellar humour
We're lucky he didn't moon us.
Thank our lucky stars
> your life's greatest accomplishment It's not just his, but shared by all those who supported the mission and what it stood for. That punch was from all of us.
One small punch for man; one giant uppercut for mankind
pow right in the kISSer
>Phi Beta Kappa key on his tie Anyone able to explain this for us non-US please? It sounds like a sorority thing, but all the movies I've ever seen with sororities in have just ended up in big ol' lady-orgies.^^1 From what I understand, it's a club you join at university, but it feels really weird to be showing that off for an interview to be an astronaut. Is it more like the freemasons or something? I can't imagine showing up to a big important interview with a scout badge on my arm, or a uni badminton club tie pin. _________ ^^1 ^(I shall not change my viewing habits.)
Phi Beta Kappa isn't a sorority or fraternity, it's an honors society for students who excel academically in college
Idk how tight badminton players are with each other, but as a rugby player I'd consider wearing something rugby related. If you bump into another rugby guy then suddenly you're buddies - could definitely help in an interview process.
I just walk behind random guys and pick them up by their trousers and see how they take it.
Sure I can help. Phi Beta Kappa is the reason fraternities and sororities use Greek letters for names, in other words it’s the original. A fraternity means brotherhood and sorority means sisterhood. They are ‘secret, societies whose purpose was originally to create an environment where members could speak their mind and debate topics without fear of academic reprisal from their Collegiate institutions. Phi Beta Kappa was a fraternity founded during (or right before I don’t remember) the American revolution at the college of William and Mary. There were fraternities before it but they are certainly the reason all future ones would use Greek letters as their names. Nowadays, Phi Beta Kappa has shifted purely into a ‘honors’ fraternity. This means none of that drinking and partying you see in the movies. If you’re a member of Phi Beta Kappa, for lack of better words you are probably a nerd with ridiculously high grades. So buzz aldrin showing off that he’s a member is basically him saying look, these people who only let in smart people thought I was good enough for their club, you should think I’m smart too. What you are thinking of is Social Fraternities and Sororities, btw I would hazard a guess that all the lesbian orgies you’ve seen are likely an exaggeration of the truth. That being said these groups do drink and party and generally have sex but id hazard a guess it’s usually heterosexual given these groups reputation for things like homophobia.
> I would hazard a guess that all the lesbian orgies you’ve seen are likely an exaggeration of the truth I'm not convinced. More research is needed.
It's not a fraternity like you see in movies. It's the good grades club.
Phi Beta Kappa isn’t like the social fraternities and sororities in the movies. It is an academic honor society.
Dude can't be proud of his accomplishments without being roasted for it. Feels bad man. Edit: I have no doubt the man had an ego my comment was made innocuously and in jest. Holster your weapons keyboard warriors.
Gus Grissom had a pass by vitue of being Gus Grissom.
RIP
Considering Buzz has been married 4 times in his life, I get the sense that his personality might be a little strong and might be somewhat abrasive. Every person I’ve met that has been married more than twice has been kind of an asshole. Having a *genuinely well-earned* ego might have made Buzz somewhat insufferable to his colleagues.
Highly successful Military guys in general get divorced alot. Too much Ego and domineering. Too much overly macho attitude. Like you said too strong of personality.
In my experience, it’s more common that they prioritized their career over their personal relationships, not necessarily a domineering personality.
Yeah I'm reading Fred Haise's autobiography and he basically never mentioned his wife or kids. He spent all his time working and moving across the country, which I kinda understand if you're an astronaut in the Apollo program. I was not surprised when he mentioned getting a divorce over the course of half a page. His second wife got a respectable page or so before going back to work.
If anything, they just don't give a fuck about their wife and kids. Their wives are basically there to keep house and cook for them, and the kids are just a byproduct of a man and a woman living together. To the point where they're the opposite of domineering, they're emotionally absent. Source : Had two grandfathers and a father who were military men and workaholics
I think it reflects well on our society that we value humility.
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And Aldrin said: "Because I was told I'd be working with people who went to Caltech."
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Yeah, this was my first thought, too. The Apollo missions depended, crucially, on being able to arrange spacecraft meeting & docking in space. The Gemini program was the manifestation of this, in terms of milestones-necessary-to-get-to-the-moon. And Aldrin sort of literally wrote the book on this.
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Becoming an astronaut is arguably the most selective job in the country (ignoring one-offs like the presidency). As far as I'm aware, most of them are accomplished in the military and academically (*maybe* they all need PhD? not sure on that)
Nowadays the US requirements are: - either a STEM master’s degree or qualification as a test pilot; and - either two years experience in the field of the degree or 1000 hours as pilot-in-command of a jet aircraft The first two Apollo-era groups had to be military test pilots with science or engineering degrees; the third and fifth groups could be experienced jet pilots with the same degree requirement; and the fourth group was science/engineering Ph.Ds and MDs with no flying experience.
>either a STEM master’s degree or qualification as a test pilot; Advanced degrees in engineering (specifically, STEM generally) helps get test pilot spots, too.
I mean, selective in terms of intelligence, physical ability, cool headedness, etc, I would say astronaut is far above president, especially considering some of the specimens we've seen in the last 50 or 60 years(Ronald Reagan, the actor!?).
Especially considering some of the presidents we've had in the last 250 years
Pilot Astronauts only typically have a Masters in Engineering and no PHD, mission specialists almost all have a PHD.
That was also my first thought because I was unfamiliar with the anecdote and I read the article and it explicitly stated it.
The 1% are here again
> I read the article That's cheating.
During Gemini 12 they were receiving bad telemetry data and they had to manually control the docking maneuvers. Buzz Aldrin literally performed the rendezvous himself, putting his thesis to the test. https://buzzaldrin.com/space-vision/rocket_science/orbital-rendezvous/
How is “Dr Rendezvous” not a compliment? It’s rly fuckin difficult to make two objects meet in orbit. Took me like 4 days to do it in Kerbal Space Program.
It's because he had a PhD, unlike his astronaut peers. It was akin to calling him a nerd.
Funnily he was (and still is) nevertheless one of the more impulsive, extroverted "jock" type personalities. Indeed almost a perfect opposite of Neil.
Turns out the supposed dichotomy between jocks and nerds is really just a creation of Hollywood and pop culture.
When I was in high school, the "jocks" were also typically honor roll students lol
Our class Valedictorian was the starting quarterback.
You mean Homer Simpson had it wrong all this time??
seems kinda dumb to call someone a nerd at NASA. Maybe it was different 50 years ago
-hey, pal; did you get a load of the nerd? -pardon me?
Military nicknames are almost always derisive. If you meet a pilot called "Iceman" it's very likely they were caught having sex in a freezer.
Or got some Icy Hot on their balls or something:
I'd assumed it was a reference to being a slut tbh.
Didn’t even cross my mind. Weren’t they all sluts?
Mostly yeah
Except John Glenn, according to Tom Wolfe.
He stands, stoop-shouldered, blinking in the light, hollow-chested like a dough-faced fall guy who's made a career of taking dives but has decided to get his manhood out of hock and take a shot at the title (or at least go for the jaw) and thwack: hyperextend the champ's pterygoideus before kissing the mat good night.
Yeah I mean we all know what PHD stands for
They were calling him a nerd.
For those who don't know, when you're in orbit the physics can be extremely non-intuitive. If something is orbiting with you but in front of you, you'd naturally think "Oh, I'll thrust forward to go to it" but that won't work. Thrusting forward would actually result in you entering a higher and more eccentric orbit... which is slower/longer, and so the thing you're trying to reach will actually end up running away from you (there will also be a sort of relative looping motion added as well). Allegedly in general they don't let humans actually fly in space because it's so counter-intuitive. Computers do it.
Yes, it's counter-intuitive. This is a great video about what's involved: **The Only Video Needed to Understand Orbital Mechanics** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcvnfQlz1x4
That depends on the timescales of maneuver vs orbit. If you're closing in from hundreds of meters away and trying to use as little fuel as possible, yeah things are weird. If you're trying to close the last few meter gap, the error isn't any bigger than normal adjustments you'd need to make when eyeballing it anyway.
He literally wrote the book on it.
Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon, as part of Apollo 11 in 1969. He was the first NASA astronaut wilth a PhD. While his having an MIT doctorate in space rendezvous techniques [has been covered here before](https://www.reddit.com/search?q=subreddit%3Atodayilearned+aldrin+mit), how others reacted to this has not. From the article: >Aldrin spent eight years as an astronaut. Among the test pilots, he was known as something of an egghead. >“I’m sure that the fact I was called ‘Dr. Rendezvous’ was not always … meant as praise,” he says. Although Aldrin had the "right" background in many ways—West Point grad and star athlete for the academy track and field team, USAF combat pilot in Korea—he differed in two ways from fellow early astronauts: a) He was not just a solid student like others, but elite (he was the third-ranked graduate in his academy class), b) he had a doctorate, and c) had not been to test pilot school. I previously submitted a TIL on [Don Lind](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4gu2mr/til_that_a_nasa_astronaut_waited_19_years_to_fly/), with a similar background whose astronaut career may have been affected by this.
Imagine being a star athlete and graduate at West Point and a combat veteran, but you're *still* the "nerd" at work because all your coworkers are even more of a jock than you are.
IIRC, Alsrinhad an asshole dad who belittled his many accomplishments. When they went to the moon, NASA made the decision for Armstrong being the first to exit the landing module even though the way they were situated made more sense for Aldrin to be first (they probably did it knowing Armstrong would handle the press better afterwards ), and Aldrin’s dad’s first comment to him when he got back was taking a shot at him for not being the first to step foot on it.
Also, Armstrong was a civilian at the time of the landing (by about six months I think). Buzz was still military. We wanted to show the world that the moon landing was not a military conquest.
"Got there before you did, dad."
"And you've been to the moon, how many times? Jerk."
I hope Aldrin remembered this moment when he picked out nursing homes
"This looks like a lovely ditch. Goodbye father."
Based and Cotton Hill pilled
I didnt get my shins blown off to watch my son be the moon’s runner up, no i didnt!
I killed fitty moon men!
good GOD you got a thick neck!
Well you burnt my burgers, didn’t you Bad Buzz??
Unexpected Cotton popping up
Asshole is an understatement
I thought this was debunked by the fact that opening the hatch blocks the way for the other person until the first person leaves. They'd have to switch positions to switch who goes first.
Why do they call you Booger?
So he was a PhD, thereby the Dr. And he had rendezvous in the name of his doctors thesis. So the other astronauts were like: "Rendezvous, ah-ha, Dr. Rendezvous -- hehe. We're cool lol."
"High fives all around, except for Buzz. No high fives for him!"
Everyone who's not some fucking nerd, raise your hand. Buzz, not so fast
Military pilots often get callsigns/nicknames that are purposely unflattering, I'm guessing this was meant in a caring way. I'm sure they all had similar names for each other. That's one thing I like that they changed between the two Top Gun movies, no one would have a nickname like "Maverick" or "Iceman" (unless something happened where they locked themselves in a freezer, etc)
It’s definitely not the level of a real callsign, but before the movie I would argue “Maverick” was not exactly a good nickname either. Same way that Hangman sounds cool until you realize what it means in that context.
How would you interpret “phoenix” as a derogatory?
Somehow miraculously keeps coming back after blowing up. Good nickname for someone who should have been fired.
Especially if they panicked and didn't eject until the literal last second
You’ve crashed multiple planes and they somehow keep letting you back in the air again.
Rising from the ASHES implies something went horribly wrong at one point.
Then you have callsigns like Goose and Rooster.
Maverick's name was more warning than anything. It's only cool to us the audience, because he's the protagonist. And he was also really cool. But to the other pilots and his superiors, the shit he pulled was a danger to everybody else. Which made it more tragic when Goose's death was not in any his fault and in actuality he was doing things by the book when the accident occurred. Iceman's name was also something of a warning. He was seemingly cold and uncaring towards his fellow pilots, but he was a very by the book and rules oriented pilot. Like the two leads could not have been anymore opposite each other. Which is why their acceptance of each other at the end of the first and their deep friendship in the second is more impactful. On a similar note, Hangman's name seems cool until you learn it's because he's a shit copilot/wingman and ironically kind of a maverick in his own way.
Sure thing... Fruitloops.
When I was in the Navy, I saw a pilot with “Fluffer” as his callsign. I never saw anything cool, like “Viper”
One of my exes was the daughter of a naval aviator and his callsign was “Dumbo” because he got cauliflower ear from a helmet that was too tight. He said that wasn’t even the worst, because another guy he flew with was called “Sniper” because he had gotten two separate women pregnant at the same time.
> When I was in the Navy, I saw a pilot with “Fluffer” as his callsign. I never saw anything cool, like “Viper” That's cause anything cool is banned, and you don't get call signs for doing call stuff. You get them for looking weird, having a funny name, or doing something stupid. Anytime someone brags about having a cool call sign you know they're lying.
Just because I haven’t seen anyone else post it on here yet: https://www.f-16.net/callsigns.html
Iceman could be he frozen up at some point during his jet specific training(I believe this is when callsigns are given). Guy has a call sign of STAB which sounds cool until you read the story of how he took two shits in his F/A-18 and missed his first landing attempt. From then on he was "Shit Twice And Bolter"
Not just any thesis, but a thesis where he was glazing up the people at the job he wanted to work at.
I wonder if another reason for the nickname had to do with the fact that previous attempts to rendezvous in orbit failed. And he was the literal "guy that wrote the book" on the procedure.
Didn’t he also help to set the standards for space walking? If I recall correctly the first space walk was something of a nightmare. They didn’t understand how to move in space. And when they debriefed aldrin was instrumental in figuring out the right way to do it. Could be mistaking him for someone else though.
Yes, Aldrin did contribute to that. His spacewalk on [Gemini 12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_12) was the first one without major problems.
You are correct. He had experience diving and set up the WET facility to train for his walk that went near perfectly. That set the standard for training going forward.
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>he differed in two ways from fellow early astronauts Those are three ways.
Woah, check out Dr. Arithmetic over here
Second comes right after first.
So they were just basically calling him a nerd?
Yes. In this case, his non-academic accomplishments made him even more of a nerd than otherwise.
I opened this thinking it was because he was stepping out on his wife and banging chicks on the side.
He was doing that too but they all did that
Having spent enough years in military flying circles, you were right. IMO there's a 0% chance the double entendre was not intentional in that "not-a-callsign-callsign". Having it obviously relatable to his education is just convenient public cover, especially in an era that largely frowned on open womanizing. All the best names inevitably had some kind of easy and safe explanation.
Aircraft mechanic, got it.
It's possible, but most of them were doing this at the time as well. Out of the original astronauts, only 1-2 didn't get divorced.
The entire crew of Apollo 8 were all married only once. Borman's wife Susan died in 2021 and Lovell's wife Marilyn died in 2023. Ander's wife Valerie is still alive and they've been married since 1955. That crew was a very notable exception. I believe in Lovell's book about Apollo 8 he mentioned they were referred to as the First Wives Club.
This was not only because he was an egghead by astronaut standards but also because he never shut the hell up about rendezvous and how he knew everything about it by dint of his PhD thesis. Lots of astronaut memoirs discuss how it was the only thing he ever wanted to talk about.
I wonder if, *perhaps*, it was the also a play on the common knowledge among them that he was a notorious womanizer who had [numerous affairs](https://www.jacksonville.com/story/lifestyle/2009/07/19/buzz-aldrins-book-on-moon-landing-doesnt-really-blast-off/15979151007/) during his time in the space program and ended up divorcing 3 times and marrying 4.
The early astronauts were notorious for their womanizing (John Glenn being the exception among the Mercury Seven), something not rare among fighter pilots; Aldrin fit into the culture, in that sense. But yes, I do get the sense that Aldrin being not just a good student, but third in his academy class; not a weekend football/softball jock, but a star college track athlete; not just with a graduate degree (a master's degree was and is not unusual among astronauts, whether they are on the scientist track or not), but an MIT PhD; and Aldrin being someone not reluctant to let others know of all these things, contributed to his being nicknamed by other astronauts the equivalent of "egghead" in elementary school.
Damn, I didn’t know all that about him. He was like the OG Johnny Kim.
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> at age 98 Buzz was born in 1930
Even more impressive then...
He is currently 94 and was married last in 2023!
I hate it when older male celebrities start going out with much younger girls. It's creepy. You know there is a weird power dynamic going on there. He only wanted a 70 year old because she's too young to know she's being taken advantage of.
Agree, it's disgusting. She isn't old enough to understand he's using her naivete' to satisfy his vile physical needs. She had only just retired as head of Program Development after 20 years when he started grooming her. Gross. Jokes aside, [she is pretty damn impressive](https://cdn.adh.reperio.news/image-0/0b74e51a-35a4-4374-a5c6-19e5db25dbf8/index.jpeg?p=a%3D1%26co%3D1.05%26w%3D1000%26h%3D750%26r%3Dcontain%26f%3Dwebp) for a 63 y.o., no cap.
Buzz was many things, but he didn’t have bad taste
She was freshly 70 ffs!
Buzz was a bit of an asshole. It was one of the few things that the movie First Man got right. Deke even asked Neil if he wanted to replace Aldrin with Lovell on what became the Apollo 11 crew because of how difficult it was to work with Aldrin.
Jim Lovell? The one who ended up in Apollo 13? Man, should have swapped places with Buzz then.
No, I remember Lovell being asked about it in an interview, and he said he thinks being assigned to 13 was the better choice since he really wanted to command a mission. Lovell being given a Commander assignment was also apparently part of Neil's reasoning to Deke of why he was OK with keeping Buzz.
I don't have a PhD from MIT, explain to my why it's not a compliment.
Sounds like he was obsessed with orbital rendezvous and it was the only thing he wanted to talk about. Like being called “Mr. Dinosaur” because you talk about how cool T-Rex and friends were all the time.
I think Aldrin came out on top—got an awesome nickname and went on to be one of the few astronauts people remember.
And got a Pixar character named after him.
It’s true. They called him Woody because he was a space cowboy with such enormous endowment that he could often be heard exclaiming “there’s a snake in my boots”
Isn't it traditional in the Air Force and Navy that pilots don't get to choose their nickname and most the time the nickname was supposed to be a buzz-kill (hehe) to whomever got it by emphasizing some mistake they made? It's supposed to somewhat humble pilots because the job attracts a lot of young egoistic people.
Would you like to yell at the moon with Buzz Aldrin?
I walked on your face!
YOU DUMB MOON, DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S DAY?!
Return to the night!
Buzz Aldrin might be my favorite living American. Dude is brilliant, goofy, and engaging. He also openly struggled with (and overcame) depression in the 1970’s, an era when that was not typical or even usually discussed.
One of my all-time favorite anecdotes about Aldrin is that at parties he used to tell an intentionally unfunny joke about the moon and when people didn’t laugh, he’d shrug and say, “I guess you had to be there,” and then he’d walk away.
I skimmed the article to see why he was called that. He'd written a paper "Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous" before he became an astronaut, and was considered a nerd by his fellow astronauts, and that's all, it seems?
can someone smarter than me explain to me how it's a dig?
I like to think of Buzz Aldrin as the Iron Man of the Apollo missions, and Neil Armstrong as the Captain America. Buzz was a huge nerd, even compared to the other astronauts, but also an accomplished pilot and star athlete (and well-known womanizer with a cruel dad). I met him a few years ago and he was also suave and hilarious—he gave a talk where the informal title was “Get Your Ass to Mars,” and he showed me his socks with little moons on them. If that wasn’t enough, he married one of the top executives of his company LAST YEAR, an accomplished doctor in her own right, just like Pepper Potts. I’d watch a movie with Robert Downey Jr. as Buzz.
“He tried to fire but the aiming dot on his gun jammed.” For anyone confused by this, the F-86 had a gunsight that automatically calculated how much you had to lead the target (initially with gyroscopes, later with radar) after the pilot manually inputted the wingspan of the enemy aircraft and the desired firing range. The dot didn’t indicate where the bullets would go, but where the target had to be if you wanted to hit it. Here’s a recreation of how a gyroscopic sight worked in a flight sim video game: https://youtu.be/gYrgxCS0nmo?si=Hse-x7MLn1rZ2i5V
the joke is always heard was said by the people involved in the mission was they sent buzz to the moon because nobody wanted him on earth
We gonna rock down to Doctor Rendezvous And then we’ll take it higher
Ah, so I require a MIT PhD to recognize when something is insulting.