Buzz Aldrin

Some things just can't be described. And stepping onto the moon was one of them.

I didn't start skiing until I was 50. My wife Lois taught me how to ski. I'm proficiently conservative.

It's real easy to manufacture what you think the people want to hear. But that's not very honest.

Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.

My first biography written in '73 was not 'Journey To The Moon.' It was 'Return To Earth.' Because for me, that was the more difficult task - disappointment.

My Sunday mornings are spent in a recovery meeting in Pacific Palisades.

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family.

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?

Do we really need these big, gigantic, heavy rockets? What if we launch a rocket that's empty, and its sole purpose is to act as a source of fuel on the Moon? Who should build that? Well, I think the U.S. should build that.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.

Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.