Collin R. Skocik

It's an interesting experience, talking to Buzz Aldrin.He stood about a foot from my face, staring directly into my eyes. He answered my question about an Earth-Mars Semi-Cycler in the samehalting monotone with which he had been answering his posse's Apollo 11 questions, yet as he went on with what apparently passes aspassion for him, I knew I had asked the right question. Buzz! As Buzz stared into my eyes and I stared into his, Ithought only of his words, tried to understand what he was saying,tried to express my genuine interest in his ideas. I was notoverwhelmed by the fact that I was here by golly talking to thelegendary second man on the Moon! The second half of Neil Armstrong& Buzz Aldrin! No, there just wasn't time, no more than Aldrin hadtime in his two-and-a-half-hour Moonwalk to appreciate that Jesus H.Christ he's on the goddamn Moon! As we talked, sure, Amy stoodpassively by, watched and listened, and yes, it dawned on her thatThis Man Walked On The Moon – but not me, not until later, not untilafter I had to bow out of the conversation because I hadn't eatenall day and was exhausted and starting to feel sick, and then spentthe rest of the weekend beating myself up for getting sick in frontof BUZZ ALDRIN!One thing I recognized as he spoke was the truth in hiswords about the apprehension everyone feels now when a shuttlelaunches – every time you hear those words "Go at throttle up" – thelast words spoken to the space shuttle Challenger – yes, when hesaid that I recognized it myself, yes, my heart skips a beat everytime I watch a launch and hear those words; it had happened earlierthat day. Despite the fact that I had no squawk box, no way ofhearing the words being spoken by either Atlantis or MissionControl, yet I grew steadily apprehensive as I watched, live, byGod, right over there! the space shuttle Atlantis climbing a pillarof cloud less than five miles from where I was standing, yes, I waswaiting for that explosion. In fact, by the time it jettisoned thesolid rocket boosters, it was too far to make out any detail, and Iwasn't sure whether the SRBs had jettisoned or whether thespacecraft had disintegrated; all I could see was a shower of lightsnearly identical to the debris of the Columbia falling from thesky . . .Yes, it was a full weekend. I'll never go to the Moon,I may never fly in space. But I spent four days hanging out withastronauts, many of them living legends – at least one of them agiant of American history who will be remembered for thousands ofyears.Many strange twists and turns of fate led me to the 2007Sims & Hankow Autograph Show at Kennedy Space Center. Many thingshad to go right in my life, dating back to 1999, for me to be in theright place at the right time to attend. I had to by chance landthat job which got me that job which got me that job which enabledme to live in Neptune Beach, Florida, a little more than two hundredmiles from Kennedy Space Center, and making enough money to affordsuch an extravagant expense as the Platinum-level ticket to thegrandiose event. After all, clearly many of the attendees were muchwealthier than I am. But that's the American system – if you canpay for it, you can have it. I'm not Bill Gates, I don't run acompany, I've never had a book published – but I shelled out themoney and got the highest level ticket.It was a long wait from March, when I bought thetickets, to June, when we left for KSC. Yet as the event came uponus, it seemed there wasn't enough time to prepare. Do we haveeverything? Is the camera packed? Do I have all the books I wantsigned? Do we have enough money for all the autographs, plusdinners and lunches and any unexpected expenses? Don't forget topack your underwear like you did last time we went on a trip! Comeon, it's already 2:00 and I told Jeanne we'd be there by six! Oh,that's right, suits for the gala on Saturday!Travel time from Neptune Beach to Kennedy Space Centeris about three hours. We needed to check in at our hotel, then findthe Holiday Inn to pick up our bus passes, and hopefully have timeto have some dinner and shower before bed. So when Amy was stillnot home from work at 2:10, I decided to call her at work and pesterher (I had finished work at noon). As it turned out, she thought itwas only 1:55; she discovered later that the clock in the bakerywhere she works was running slow.So by the time she got home, I was in an all-firedhurry. I had already put her bags in the car and she wasn't donepacking. Hurry up, hurry up, let's go! I rushed her along in jest,but there was some genuine concern behind my words that we'd getthere late. Not knowing for sure what was going on, I wanted plentyof time to find my way to the right place and the right person atthe right time."Never rush an obsessive-compulsive checker," Amy toldme as we went out the front door. "Now I'm going to be worried thatwe forgot something." Well, fine, who cares? At least we're on ourway.But our early start would soon come to an abrupt andstartling end. As we drove south on third street, we saw an SUVpull over and a family get out. A rough-looking, dark-skinned guy,a woman, and two or perhaps three very young children. The rough-looking guy shoved the little girl in front of him, a tiny thingperhaps five years old or younger, pushed her – perhaps I should saythrew her across the road. Smack! She landed flat on her face onthe asphalt."What the hell was that?!" Amy screamed – Amy doesn'tswear. Ever.Astonished at such a public display of domesticviolence, I slowed down and stared out the window at the guy,primarily in hopes of embarrassing him. I didn't actually intend todo anything – I know better than to challenge a guy who's muchbigger than me, particularly when I'm on my way to the event of alifetime.But as we continued south, we both decided we shouldcall the police. It didn't seem like a 911 emergency, and 411 costsextra money on our cell phones, and we didn't know the license platenumber of the family's vehicle and couldn't remember the location,so we decided to turn around, write down the license plate numberand street address, and return to our apartment and call the policefrom there. On our way back, we spotted the family walking southwith all things evidently peaceful.Nevertheless we pulled up behind their vehicle – which,as it turned out, had a flat tire – got the license plate, returnedto our apartment and called the police. (Why, I wonder, did I thinkit would be quicker to dial the operator than to look up the numberin the phone book?)So with Amy feeling proud of me for being a hero and meworried that I'd made a dangerous enemy, we finally set off at3:00. My tape of the theme to From the Earth to the Moon died inthe car's cassette player – oh, well. It was a nice thought.The weather held up until we were approaching our exit,and then we found ourselves in the middle of what seemed to me anunscheduled hurricane. Fat, solid globs of rain smacked against thecar – the hood and roof of the car bear ugly scars that I don't knowhow I'm going to pay to have fixed – and the rain fell harder andharder until it was nearly impossible to see. Absurdly, though Iwas fighting to keep the car from hydroplaning, I spent aninordinate percentage of the time concerned about more hail strikesdamaging the shuttle and scrubbing the launch.The rain lightened as we turned off on our exit andheaded for A1A and our hotel. As we crossed a long bridge, the rainwas still heavy enough that I was worried the bridge might beflooded; for some reason the bridges in that area are ridiculouslyclose to the water.But the route was quite passable, the rain lightened tono more than an annoying shower, and we found ourselves in a glitzy,touristy area reminiscent of what I've heard about Miami and otheroverdeveloped parts of Florida – utterly unlike our comparativelyquiet little beach town. Hotels, surf shops, restaurants and Godknows what else towered around us everywhere. I often complain thatour area is becoming overdeveloped, but our several rows of condos,heavy traffic, and unreasonable abundance of stop lights seempositively tame compared to the City of Cape Canaveral.That said, our hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott, turnedout to be just my kind of place. Nice without being pretentious.Spacious and comfy. The Days Inn with a bit of class.Not that we really had time to look around, we had toget to the Holiday Inn for our bus passes, otherwise we'd have todrive to KSC all weekend and that would NOT be good on launch day.Fortunately the Holiday Inn was just a quick drive down a roadwhich, while very busy, was quite familiar in traffic volume to myquieter but still hectic home town.But we had no idea where to go in the Holiday Inn. Wewent into the lobby, found it full of people, but no sign of tablesor organization of any kind. So we did the logical thing: asked atthe desk. The girl we spoke to checked her computer and determinedthat "They'll be handing out the passes at 7:30."7:30! Now, why didn't they tell me that when I talkedto them on the phone weeks ago? Well, that gave us about an hour.We decided to have dinner. Though there was a Denny's right acrossthe street, Amy wanted to try the restaurant in our hotel. So wedrove back to the Courtyard by Marriott and had dinner in theirMoonwalker Café. By the time we returned to the Holiday Inn it was7:40.The scene had not changed; still a crowded lobby withlots of people sitting or standing, but no organization, no sign ofpasses being handed out. So again we asked at the desk. We triedcalling the room referenced on a sign in the lobby, but there was noanswer. After a lengthy delay during which the girl helping usdisappeared to try to find out if there was anyone else we couldcontact, we asked to call Nolan Sims himself – one of the two keyorganizers of the event.This time we had more success. The woman who picked upthe phone told me they were still working on final arrangements andasked us to stay in the lobby and wait for them.So we waited. And waited. And waited.Finally a woman next to us got up and decided to go toNolan's room to pester him. As she left, Amy asked me if we shoulddo the same. "No," I told her, "we don't even know where his roomis."So we waited. And waited. And waited.Finally someone outside my field of view arrived(typically, I was sitting behind a pillar which blocked my view ofeverything) and told us to go to Nolan's room.So we followed a winding path through the Land of Oz andpast playgrounds and through courtyards and up and down bridges andbetween buildings, Jesus, what kind of hotel is this? until wereached Nolan's room. He invited us in, told us to make ourselvescomfortable, and went back to working on the arrangements forSaturday's dinner. He was so casual, so relaxed, that we figured wewould just lounge around until someone came to us. But soon wenoticed a distinct line had formed in front of a woman who washanding out packages.Frustrated beyond propriety, we shoved our way into linebecause we were there first, dammit, and picked up our package.When left the room, I was ready to go back to our hoteland settle in for the night, but Amy wisely decided to check thepackage to make sure there was no screw-up.Okay, the package contained a detailed schedule ofevents and two passes to the launch, but no bus passes. So back wewent to the room to ask, please, where in the goddamn hell are ourfrickin' shuttle bus passes that we came here specifically to get?Well, we phrased it more diplomatically than that since we are bothvery nice people, and we were told that our Platinum tickets wereour bus passes.We came all the way out here, fought the traffic twice,sat and waited for almost an hour, to be told that what we came forwe already had?Fine. Since the package contained tickets to premiumseating to watch the launch, it was worth the fuss anyway. (Ofcourse, we had to exchange those tickets at the space center thenext day and pay $15 each to get passes that would actually work,but hey, that's NASA.)So we finally returned to the hotel and settled in andhad a nice, quiet evening – our last nice, quiet evening of thetrip – and the next day we got up at 6:30 to begin our adventure.After breakfast in the Moonwalker Café, we went out andboarded the bus. We sat among a growing number of passengers beforesomeone stepped onto the bus and asked, "Is anyone here for theautograph show?" Yes, we are. "Your bus is the next one back.This is the bus to the Space Operations Tour."Now, what is the Space Operations Tour?Well, whatever. We got off the bus, enduring thelaughter of the other passengers, and boarded a totally empty bus.In time we were joined by one other person, a police chief fromCalifornia. The three of us sat.And waited. And waited. And waited.The bus was supposed to leave for the Space Center at8:00. Eventually we were joined by a fourth person, Mark Lee fromEngland, who we would be seeing a lot of over the next three days.He had only found out about the autograph show a few days before,yet somehow managed to finagle himself a platinum ticket. Evidentlyone of the platinum holders was selling his ticket on eBay, so Markjumped at the chance to attend. When he had trouble locating theseller, Nolan Sims simply gave him a platinum ticket and theseller's dinner seat – with Apollo 12 lunar module pilot Alan Bean!We would watch in amazement in the days to come as Mark's train ofluck continued. It was 8:20 by the time the driver got permissionto leave with the three of us and take us over. This was not good,since our "VERY SPECIAL tour" of Kennedy Space Center was supposedto start at 9:00 and it was a 45-minute drive from our hotel to KSC.Well, long story short, we got there in time – onereason being that the tour did not begin on time.Out of all of our experiences during the trip, the "veryspecial tour" was probably the most disappointing. Not that itwasn't interesting – Kennedy Space Center is always a thrill – but Iwas hoping we'd go inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, go intoLaunch Control, maybe tour the facility where they build the spacestation modules.But no, the "very special tour" is simply a bus tour ofboth Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.Well, we'd never been to Cape Canaveral, so that was interesting.We got to see a Titan rocket on the pad, preparing to launch two spysatellites; we saw the spot where the Space Shuttle Challenger isburied, saw the Mercury Mission Control Center and the launch padswhere the Mercury, Gemini, and early unmanned Apollo missions werelaunched. The tour of Kennedy Space Center included a stop at aviewing gantry where we could see the Atlantis on the pad – whichwould have been far more impressive if we hadn't just gotten to seethe space shuttle Discovery on the pad a few months before.Since the tour started late, we got back late. We weresupposed to be back at the Visitors' Center at noon for lunch, andwe got back at 12:30. The first lecture we were to attend was at1:00. And we still had to exchange our admission tickets for ouryear-round tickets included with our Platinum pass. Unfortunatelythe line into Guest Services was, shall we say, long.With time pressing down on us like G-forces in a Saturn-V rocket, Amy ran to grab us a pretzel and a drink while I held ourplace in line.That was lunch. A pretzel and a drink. So we stood inline.And waited. And waited. And waited.By 12:55 the line had not moved. It was clear that ifwe stayed, we would miss Guenter Wendt's lecture, and that wassomething we did not want to happen. The problem was our admissiontickets were for that day only; if we did not exchange them for ourannual passes that day, we would not be able to get into the SpaceCenter the following day. But starting at 1:00, there were lecturesevery hour on the hour until the buses were to take us back to ourhotels. So what do we do?Well, short-term priority, just get to Guenter'slecture. We'd ask one of the event organizers when we had a chance.Fortunately, when we arrived in the auditorium at theDebus Facility, one of the event organizers was right there in thefront row. Being rather audacious people, not to mention goodstudents in college, we gravitated to the front row anyway and satdown (unaware that the old guy two seats from us was Guenter Wendthimself!). Amy asked the event organizer about our problem and shepromised she'd check into it. By then the lecture was beginning.Guenter Wendt. Pad leader during Mercury, Gemini, andApollo. The Pad Fuhrer, as he was called by the astronauts – one ofa very few people who had the guts to tell the astronauts what todo, much less had them do what he said! He was one of the Germanscientists who was brought to the United States after World War II,and whatever he was in the heyday of the space race, he was now awithered, frail, completely bald, thin and stooped-over old man whocouldn't walk without a cane, and whose curious manner of speakinghad him continually darting his dry tongue from side to side,licking what little remained of his lips. After sixty years ofliving in the United States, his thick German accent had persisted.When he spoke fast, he was nearly incomprehensible.But his stories, his enthusiasm, his unexpected sense ofhumor, gave a hint to the man he must once have been. Strange tosee a man from the other side of the war my grandfather fought, aNazi, speaking of equality and humanity, telling heartwarmingstories of showing janitors around the Apollo spacecraft, telling ofhow he doesn't care how many companies you run or what color yourskin is, he judges people by who they are.We laughed, we learned, a few times we said, "What thehell did he just say?" – most of all we enjoyed listening to A ManWho Was There, there in one of the greatest periods of Americanhistory.After Guenter's lecture, one of the KSC employees cameto the stage and announced that there had been "concerns" about thelength of the line to Guest Services, and that ticket-holders wereconcerned about obtaining their annual passes without missing any ofthe lectures. They had reached a solution; he handed each of ustickets into the Space Center for the following day, when we wouldhave more time to exchange them for our annual passes. There,problem solved. If only everything was that easy . . .Now came the first of quite a few encounters with a manI would come to like and respect a great deal, someone I'd be happyto have a dinner with should I attend one of these shows again: SyLiebergot, Apollo EECOM.EECOM is a position in Mission Control, standing forElectrical, Environmental and Communications Systems. Sy Liebergot,in particular, is famous for his role in the Apollo 13 disaster. Itwas Sy who was on watch when Jack Swigert sent his famousmessage, "Houston, we've had a problem." It was Sy who saw thedata, analyzed it, and determined that Apollo 13's moon landingmission had to be aborted.I don't know what the rest of the audience thought ofMr. Liebergot's lecture; for all I know they were bored to tears.For myself, though, the lecture was mesmerizing. Maybe it's becauseI enjoy learning the technical aspects of space travel. Maybe it'sbecause I work in a technical job and I used to have a position inwhich I had to analyze screens of information rapidly and make snapdecisions. Maybe it's a childhood desire to be part of the spaceprogram and hence to understand how things work. But as Sy showedslide after slide of the actual data from his screen at MissionControl as the Apollo 13 disaster unfolded, I was fascinated. Tosee that data, to begin to understand it, to have some comprehensionof what Sy went through during the event, I wondered, and stillwonder, could I perhaps have been a flight controller for NASA? Isit really so different from my old job as a production coordinatorfor a captioning company? Sure, the stakes are much higher, butperhaps the job requirements are much the same.Anyway . . .The next lecturer was Rusty Schweickart. RustySchweickart! Here, at last, was a real astronaut hero, one of thegreat names of the space race. Lunar module pilot of Apollo 9, thefirst man to pilot a lunar module in space. Since we were in thefirst row, I felt as though I were already meeting him, I feltnervous as he stepped up to the stage. With white hair and somewrinkles, you could tell Rusty was an older man. But he was trim,fit, strong, energetic, traits which I would soon discover wereinherent in most of the astronauts I met that weekend. Here was atrue American hero. Not some idiot who gets paid millions ofdollars to bounce a ball up and down a court, not someone whopretends to fly in space in front of a movie camera while recitinglines from a script, but a real, genuine space explorer.But Rusty didn't talk about his experiences in Apolloand Skylab. His life has moved on from that – as all theastronauts' lives have – and he has explored new frontiers. Hespoke about the danger of near-Earth asteroids. He was full ofinformation about Earth's past encounters with the giant objectsthat share our Solar System. He discussed the tremendous impactwhich wiped out not just the dinosaurs, but seventy percent of lifeon Earth. He discussed previous impacts, from long before dinosaursexisted on Earth, one of which completely vaporized Earth's oceans.And he painted a chilling scenario in which a killer asteroidpunches a hole through the crust and kicks up enough dust and debristo make the sky incandescent. In such a scenario, all organicmatter on the surface of the Earth would burn. Not pretty. And hediscussed the fact that, although there is a government program tocatalogue near-Earth objects, there is no contingency to deal withan asteroid on collision course with Earth.It's a shame that Hollywood has cheapened the danger ofasteroid impacts with cornball movies; regrettably this has resultedin the mass public paying little or no heed to the very real andimminent danger of an eventual impact. Such an impact may nothappen for another million years . . . but it could happentomorrow. It's a sobering thought.After Rusty's lecture came the one I was looking forwardto. A man whose space flight has become my personal hobby, amission I have studied more than any other. Al Worden, commandmodule pilot of Apollo 15!Here he came, an exuberant, potato-shaped bald man witha large nose, practically running to the stage – well, maybe not,but that's the way I remember it. Excitable, friendly,enthusiastic, Al Worden would be the life of the party for theremainder of the weekend.Apollo 15! It's a tough choice between the otherworldlywonders of Apollo 15, 16, and 17, the three "J" missions, but 15 hasmy personal affection, perhaps because it was the first of the "J"missions. The first mission to take the expanded Apollo spacecraftto the Moon. Outfitted with a Scientific Instrument Module, theApollo Command and Service Module became a true orbiting science labdedicated to the scientific exploration of the Moon. The expandedlunar module was equipped with extra power packs and oxygen, andincluded the famous lunar roving vehicle, or rover, the battery-powered car that enabled the astronauts to venture miles from theirspacecraft, doing true geological fieldwork on the Moon. And unlikethe earlier truncated missions, the "J" missions remained on theMoon for three whole days.Apollo 15! Dave Scott, Al Worden, Jim Irwin. As Iwatched my NASA documentaries, Dave Scott and Jim Irwin roved theirway into my heart with their excited exclamations of each newwonder, with their bold venture across the breathtaking Hadley Rillein the Palus Pudredinus region of the Moon.And here was Al Worden, in the flesh. No longer a namein a book, no longer a posed photo, no longer a scratchy voice on atape, here was Al Worden. And his lecture was entirely devoted toApollo 15. With infectious exuberance and a decidedly dirty senseof humor, Worden talked about eating, drinking, and going to thebathroom in space. He talked about the maneuvers, the science, butmost of all about the experience of traveling to the Moon andcarrying out what he considers to be the most productive mannedscientific survey of all the lunar missions. He showed slides ofthe various photographs he snapped from the command module, many ofwhich I had never seen before. One of the most touching was animage of the crescent Earth coming up over the Moon. Bathed indarkness, and with a rugged, mountainous lunar landscape below, thepicture is quite different from the famous Earthrise photo taken byApollo 8.Primarily, though, Worden's lecture was not about lunarexploration or the wonders of space flight; his lecture wasprimarily a collection of humorous anecdotes about living in space.As he described seeing his buddy float past him with his pants downand a bag stuck to his butt, I realized just how intimate thosecrews had to be in order to spend those long space missionstogether. Being an intensely private person, I don't think I couldstand it; I hope the Orion CEV and its successors have bathrooms!When Al Worden was finished, it was time to go back toour hotel and get ready for the movie. We had tickets to see thenew documentary film The Wonder of it All, which was being shown ata theater somewhere on Merritt Island. With about an hour to spare,I wanted plenty of time to find that theater.The mall, being a mall, was easy to find, and we arrivedearly. Excited at having discovered a new mall, Amy wanted toexplore. She was also quite hungry by now – if you'll recall, wedidn't have much of a lunch – and wanted to have dinner before themovie. I promised her we could look around a while before going tothe theater.But that all changed when we went into the mall and sawthe line. Wisely, we aborted our dinner expedition and got in line.And we waited. And waited. And waited.Shortly I realized that the other people in line wereholding a different sheet of paper than I was. When the filmmakershad received my payment for the movie tickets, they had sent me an e-mail telling me to print up my Paypal confirmation and use that asmy receipt to get into the movie. I had printed up that e-mail. Irealized now that I should have followed the link in the e-mail inorder to print up the receipt. But I wasn't too concerned, sinceall the necessary information was on that e-mail, and I had, afterall, paid. Nevertheless, I was quite relieved when I got to thefront of the line and was passed through without incident. I saidnothing, the guy at the table said nothing.I realized later that the guy at the table was JeffreyRoth, the director of the film.The theater was packed. In fact, Mr. Roth announcedshortly before the film started that he had not expected such aturnout. This, I expect, explains why the line was so long and whythe film started late.With every seat in the theater filled, the movie beganafter a brief introduction by the director. It was not astraightforward documentary about the Apollo program, but was rathera deep exploration of the astronauts themselves. At the beginningof the film, the narrator tells us that twelve men have walked onthe Moon . . . but no one knows who they are. Perhaps for the firsttime, a documentary let the astronauts talk in depth aboutthemselves, about their lives and experiences and how their lunarmissions affected them. It was a powerful film, despite a glitch inthe DVD (DVD? In a movie theater?) which caused the film to bestopped for about a half hour in mid-stride.We knew that there was going to be an appearance at themovie by one of the Moonwalkers, but we were never told who it wouldbe. It was always To Be Announced. As it turned out, theMoonwalker in attendance, who answered a Q&A after the movie, wasnone other than Ed Mitchell, the same astronaut Amy and I werescheduled to have dinner with.Ed Mitchell, lunar module pilot of Apollo 14, who wentto the Moon with the legendary Alan Shepard, who had secretlyconducted ESP experiments on the way to the Moon, who hadunflinchingly handled a problem with the lunar module's abort systemand radar failure during the landing, and who had founded theInstitute on Noetic Sciences after returning to Earth, obsessed withlearning the nature of consciousness. The questions were fairlytypical: When your radar went out prior to landing, did you everthink you would have to abort? What was it like working with AlanShepard? What was it like to ride the Saturn-V? Dr. Mitchell'sanswers were concise, articulate, and very interesting – but, as wewould discover two nights later, completely ritualized.By the time we left the theater it was 10:00. Wegrabbed a quick unhealthy dinner at Burger King and went back to thehotel for an early start the next morning.The following morning, it was the same routine. We gotup at 6:30, had breakfast at the Moonwalker Café, and went out toget on the bus. Amy had to go back up to the room to take care ofwhat Al Worden called "a euphemism." When she came back down, Iwent to hurry her out the door, concerned that we'd miss the bus –but as she approached she whispered, "Look who was on the elevatorwith me!" And I looked up into the face of Apollo 16 commanderCharlie Duke.Since we were having a banquet with the astronauts that night, Isimply nodded at him and moved on, but man, of all the astronauts tosuddenly find myself face-to-face with! Charlie Duke! Apollo 16 –a spectacular mission, perhaps the most informative about the natureof the Moon – and a landing that almost didn't happen. After thelunar module disconnected from the command module, the commandmodule was supposed to increase its orbit from a tight ellipse ofthirty-seven miles out to a more circular orbit of more than ahundred miles. But command module pilot Ken Mattingly got anintense vibration from the engine, and the landing was nearlyscrubbed. The lunar module was recalled and the two spacecraftrendezvoused in lunar orbit, the crew resigned that their missionwas a bust. Although the exuberant news came in the nextorbit, "You are go for landing," they did lose almost a full day oflunar exploration; Mission Control decided not to extend the missionfor fear that the shadows would become too long by the third day toallow for safe exploration. The second disappointment came on thelunar surface, when lunar module pilot John Young accidentallyripped a cord out of the lunar heat flow experiment. Although itwas possible to repair the damage, the operation would be too time-consuming, so the experiment was abandoned. But Apollo 16 didreveal some illuminating facts about the Descartes Highlands of theMoon – specifically that the region was formed by meteoricbombardment, not by volcanism as the geologists on Earth had beenpretty confident. The geologists in the back room must havewondered if they'd trained their astronauts properly as theyreported every rock they found as breccia. But Charlie Duke andJohn Young knew what they were doing; the rocks they found wereindeed breccia, and the scientific method did its work. The oldtheory was abandoned and the new one embraced. Apollo 16 was one ofthe great triumphs of the space program.And here was Charlie Duke in the flesh, having ridden down theelevator with my wife. When the elevator doors opened, she stoodback to let one of the great American heroes pass, but he insistedshe go first. Charlie Duke may have gone to the Moon, but he wasn'tgetting off an elevator in front of a woman. Chivalry is not dead.It was the same small group on the bus – that is to say myself, Amy,our police chief from California, and Mark Lee, but today there wasa new passenger.The living Moonwalkers who did not attend the event wereNeil Armstrong, who never goes anywhere, John Young, HarrisonSchmitt, and Dave Scott. I was keenly disappointed that I was notgoing to meet Dave Scott. But when Mark asked the other newpassenger his name, he replied, "David Scott." So there you go, Igot to meet Dave Scott. Not Apollo 15 commander Dave Scott, butDave Scott nonetheless.Friday was a much more relaxed day than Thursday. Theonly events scheduled were the autograph show until 5:00, theshuttle launch at 7:39, and the banquet afterward in which allplatinum ticket holders could mingle at their leisure with theastronauts. So the first thing we did was exchange our tickets forour annual passes. Then we went over to the Debus Facility to getour autographs.When you're in a room filled with living legends, wheredo you begin? We wandered the crowded room, taking in the scene.The astronauts were seated behind tables arranged in two concentricsquares, one around the edge of the room with the astronauts againstthe wall, the other within the room with the astronauts at thecenter. We searched for the ones we wanted to meet, particularlyBuzz. As you might expect, Buzz's line was quite long. Gene Cernanand Alan Bean had places set up, but were nowhere in sight.After acclimating ourselves, we picked an astronaut atrandom in order to start collecting autographs. My goal was to haveevery Apollo astronaut sign my copy of A Man on the Moon by AndrewChaikin, a much-praised, definitive history of the Apollo program.We started with Apollo 7 lunar module pilot Walt Cunningham (whatdoes the lunar module pilot do on a mission that doesn't have alunar module?) and quickly discovered that autographs weresignificantly more expensive than we expected. My plan to collectautographs from all the astronauts there, even just the Apolloastronauts, quickly evaporated, and I had to prioritize whose Iwanted the most.As it happened, one choice was made for me fairlyquickly. No sooner had Cunningham signed my book than Al Worden satnext to him. There was no line yet, so I stepped over directly fromCunningham to Worden. "I loved your lecture yesterday," I toldhim. "Apollo 15 is my favorite mission.""Really?" he replied with typical ebullience. "It's myfavorite too!"We decided to brave the long line and exorbitant pricefor Buzz Aldrin's autograph – after all, my original reason forattending the convention was specifically to meet Buzz.Unfortunately my first encounter with the Second Man on the Moon wasless than memorable. I stepped up to him, handed him my book, andwithout even looking at me he opened the book and mumbled, "Whered'ya want me to sign?" I pointed at the page with Worden andCunningham's signatures, he scribbled "Buzz Aldrin, Apollo XI," andhanded me the book with a vague smile. I thanked him and moved off,thinking, Wow, I've just been snubbed by the legendary Buzz Aldrin.My perception of Buzz would change that evening.Next was Gene Kranz, flight director during most of theApollo era. A giant of a man with a powerful, booming voice, Kranzstill held the air of authority of a flight director. Anyonecatching a glimpse of Gene Kranz would be surprised to learn that hewas never a Marine. You might be even more surprised by what a down-home nice guy he is! I had already discovered, having read his bookFailure is Not an Option, that he is a much more sensitive andemotional person than he appears to be. But it truly took me bysurprise to watch him laughing and joking with people as theystepped up to get his autograph. A glowing smile lit up his face atwill, he'd laugh and slap you on the back, his rumbling, gruff voicewould puff out incongruous sentences like, "I'd be more than happyto" and "whaddya say I sign it right here, is that all right?"The guy in front of us wanted Gene's autograph onsomething with an unusual color. Gene had a pile of pens next tohim, and he knew which color would look best on what. So he smiledand said in the friendliest tone of voice you can imagine, "I thinkI'll sign that in pencil. I think pencil would look best there.Whaddya think? Is that okay?" But then he couldn't find hispencil. "Where's my pencil? Anybody got a pencil?"Amy always has a pen and pencil in her purse. So as ifshe were in the grocery store checkout, she reached out and handedGene Kranz, Mission Control Flight Director, her pencil."Thank you," he said, mildly surprised. Of course, thiswas one of those plastic pencils that you have to tap on the eraserin order to erect the lead. There was a man who brought men homefrom the Moon, trying to figure out why the pencil wasn'twriting. "How d'ya get this thing to work?" he grumbled. Amyexplained that he needed to tap on the eraser."Aw, one o'those." Gene half-heartedly tried it, then handed itback. "I can't use that thing." His staff member, who Amy deducedwas his wife, explained that the lead breaks too easily. So nowthat's Amy's Gene Kranz Pencil, or the Pencil That Gene KranzRefused to Use.When it was my turn, I handed Gene my copy of Failure is Not anOption. "Have you read it?" he asked as he signed it."I sure did," I said. "I loved it. I think you picked a greattitle. Failure is Not an Option. That's how you ran MissionControl and that's how you wrote the book.""Absolutely," his wife agreed.Next we stopped at Rusty Schweickart's table. I mentioned to himthat Hollywood loves to make asteroid movies, but no one has made atruly serious one which could alert people that the asteroid dangeris real, not entertainment. He told me there actually was a verywell-done Canadian movie on the subject, but he couldn't rememberthe title. I asked him if he had seen the British nuclear war filmThreads, a devastatingly realistic and scientifically accuratedramatization of the aftermath of a global nuclear war. Yes, he hadseen it. I told him I'd like to see an asteroid movie done in thatvein.Next we dropped by Ed Mitchell's table. We didn't mention that we'dbe dining with him; actually we didn't say much at all, figuringthat we'd have plenty of time to talk to him over dinner.That brings me to what was surprisingly the most emotionally potentmoment of the weekend. We got in line for Scott Carpenter'sautograph. I wanted him to sign my copy of his autobiography ForSpacious Skies, which I happened to be reading at the time. Now, Iwasn't really thinking much about meeting Scott Carpenter. I wasthinking mostly about the Moonwalkers. I wanted to meet BuzzAldrin. I wanted to talk to the men who explored another world.Scott Carpenter flew one low Earth orbital mission. Big whoop.But as I stood in line, I looked ahead to the table and saw himsigning autographs – now a thin, slow-moving, tired-looking oldman. I looked at the cover of my book, with the smiling young faceof Mercury Astronaut Scott Carpenter. I heard the music from TheRight Stuff being piped through the room. I looked again at the oldman at the table. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by a sense of deephonor and pride that I was about to meet a piece of living history.I had given no thought to what a pioneer I was about to meet. Theage of Mercury was over long before I was born, but I've read aboutit, and I remembered now that during that time, Scott Carpenter wasone of seven national heroes of a stature that our country had neverknown before or since, which perhaps our entire world has not knownin many centuries. It was such a powerful realization that italmost brought tears to my eyes. I'm glad I thought of that beforemeeting him rather than later.When I stepped up to his table I was able to look into his eyes witha full comprehension and deep understanding of who I was meeting andwhat he represented in the history of our country.When he opened my book, he saw an old library card folder in theinside cover; I had forgotten it was there. "Did you steal thisfrom a library?" he asked, I hope jokingly.Honestly I had no idea where the book came from. I toldhim, "Actually, it was a very generous gift from my wife." That wastrue enough. Amy had come home from work one day and shyly toldme, "I got you something." Out of the blue she handed me ForSpacious Skies. It wasn't a holiday, we hadn't had an argument oranything, nothing special was going on, she had just decided for noparticular reason to get me a gift.Amy explained to Scott where the book had come from, but I wasn'tpaying attention by that time; I was composing what I wanted to sayto the Fourth American In Space, the Second American to Orbit theEarth. So I still am not sure where that book came from even afterwitnessing my wife discussing it with Scott Carpenter himself. Whenthey were finished, Carpenter asked me if I had read the book. Itold him I was actually still reading it. I said, "This is kind ofa small thing, but I think I had much the same relationship with mygrandfather that you had with yours." Scott Carpenter had been veryclose to his maternal grandfather, a man who seemed to knoweverything, who showed young Scotty how to use a knife, how to ridea horse, how to make a whistle, how this and how that, and Scottyfelt he was the greatest guy in the world. My grandfather taught mehow to fish, how to handle a gun, how to work with wood, how thisand how that, and I felt he was the greatest guy in the world. WhenI told Carpenter that, he looked at me with some surprise andsaid, "Well, maybe someday you'll have the same relationship withyour daughter as I do with mine." The woman to his left was hisdaughter, Kris Stoever, who had co-written his book. She introducedherself, and Amy and I explained that we already knew who she was;while standing in line, we had identified her by her picture in thebook."When she was born," Carpenter told me, "I always told her what todo. Now our positions are reversed; she tells me what to do!"Since the autographs were so much more expensive than I hadexpected – premium pricing, I found out later – I had to make somecareful decisions who I was going to visit next. Weighing theprices, I decided I could either get Jim Lovell's autograph and bedone, or I could wait until Alan Bean and Gene Cernan showed up, gettheir autographs and be done. I decided to go with Lovell. He wasthere, Bean and Cernan were not. Either way, I both win and lose,since I wanted to meet all of them.Part of my Platinum ticket package was automatic go-to-the-head-of-the-line privilege. We had not taken advantage of that privilege –it just didn't feel right to cut in front of all the other peoplewho were waiting patiently, even though we had paid for the option.But as we were standing in Lovell's Long Line, someone came alongand asked who in line had platinum tickets. We waved ours in hisface and he pulled us up to the front of the line. "Don't you knowyou can go to the head of the line?" he asked. "That's what youpaid for!"So we got to bypass the line and were escorted like V.I.P.s to thepresence of Apollo 8 Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, a member ofthe first crew to go to the Moon, as well as the heroic commander ofthe ill-fated Apollo 13. The flip side of skipping to the head ofthe line is I didn't have a chance to compose my thoughts. Inretrospect I wish I had said something about Apollo 8. Instead, Itold him how much I enjoyed his audio commentary on the Apollo 13movie. I told him that was the best way to learn about history –and I meant it. His commentary is extraordinary. He thanked me andI was on my way in thirty seconds. I had the impression that he wasoverwhelmed by the sheer number of people who wanted to talk tohim. He was friendly enough, but a bit distracted.And that was it. My money was gone, and therefore my autographswere done with. So we left the autograph show to explore the otherwonders of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center. One thing wehad been looking forward to was trying out the space shuttle launchsimulator, a new exhibit reputed to accurately reproduce thesensations of a launch. It took a bit of exploration to figure outhow to get into the thing, or even where it was, but once we were inline I began to get nervous – not so much for myself, but for thechronically motion sick Amy. I looked at the various warnings tothe effect that you have to be in excellent physical condition, nothave a heart problem, not be prone to motion sickness, etc. Ipointed out to Amy that there's a warning about motion sickness, andshe shrugged and said, "I'll take my chances." Okay, fine. She'dsaid the same thing when we rode this crazy whirly ride at thecounty fair some years back and she paid the price dearly. Inretrospect, maybe I should have tried it out first and let her knowafterward what it was like, but I didn't think of it. Anyway, noharm done. As it turned out, she didn't get sick.The simulator bears no resemblance to any actual part of the spaceshuttle. It's a large cylindrical theater which is hypotheticallyin the payload bay. As a matter of fact, although some shuttlemissions take a lab into orbit in the payload bay where theastronauts do much of their work, no one would be sitting in itduring launch. But that's okay, they needed space to fit all theguests.As the ride began, the entire room rotated, like the centrifuge in2001: A Space Odyssey, until we were lying on our backs and facingstraight up. When the countdown reached zero . . .We blasted off!I don't know how they produced the illusion of thrust. The roomvibrated violently, there was an awesome thunderous noise of therockets, and I felt pressed against the seat. I even felt the skinon my face sliding back as if pulled by gee forces. Honestly, I wasexpecting the experience to be quite unpleasant – a launch is adangerous, noisy and violent affair, but in fact I found the ridepleasant, almost soothing. If it had continued long enough, itmight have lulled me to sleep.Then the solid rocket boosters jettisoned and the vibrationstopped. Some of the noise went too. But the distinct sensation ofthrust continued. The sound gradually diminished. Finally theengines cut off, there was complete silence . . .And I felt weightless. My body tugged against my seat belt, I wasready to take off across the room. Quickly I realized what wascausing the effect: after continually pointing straight up in avertical position, the room was now rapidly (and above all silently)tumbling forward, until we were facing downward at perhaps 45degrees. It's hard to judge for sure, by now our directionalreference was completely jumbled. The point is we felt weightless.Then the doors above us opened, revealing the landscape of Earth,and a spectacular array of stars beyond. We were in space!All too soon, it was over. It was an exhilarating experience, onewhich shuttle astronaut Hoot Gibson assured one of the other guestsis, in fact, an authentic re-creation of what a launch feels like.If that's true, if that mild and pleasant ride is really what theride into orbit is like, then any reservation I may have felt aboutgoing into space for is gone now – I've done it in a simulator, nowI want to do it for real!As we left the simulator, filing down a spiral ramp surrounding alovely, glowing globe of Earth and past plaques commemorating eachof the shuttle missions, we talked about what an incredibleexperience the simulator was, and we agreed to do it again beforeour trip was over.Next we stopped in the gift shop. I never spend money, stores arethe last place I like to spend my time – but it's dangerous to turnme loose in a space shop. The gift shop in the Visitor's Center ishuge, two stories, filled to brimming with cups, T-Shirts, toys,models, books, DVDs, food, pens and pencils, everything spacerelated of every imaginable shape and function, from all eras ofAmerican, and even Russian, space flight. There was shuttle stuffeverywhere, Apollo stuff, Mercury stuff, Gemini stuff – they don'tyet seem to have any Orion/Constellation stuff, but . . . well, givethem time. Give them time.It's a lucky thing I have the self-control I have or I might haveutterly ruined our credit rating. As it was I only spent all myspending money for the next two months. I've heard such wonderfulthings about Mark Gray's Spacecraft Films collection, I bought anawesome set of DVDs containing all video and audio footage from theApollo 15 mission. Twenty-one straight hours documenting almostevery detail of Dave Scott and Jim Irwin's adventure on the Moon.Really, I want all the Apollo missions, but the Spacecraft Filmscollection is mighty pricey, so I'll have to take it one at a timeas I can afford them.By now, Alan Bean and Gene Cernan were scheduled to have shown up atthe autograph show, so Amy and I had the "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" conversation, and I decided to go ahead andget the cheaper of the two autographs, which was Alan Bean.We returned to the autograph show and found that Bean was indeedthere, and his line reached all the way across the room. It mightbe a long afternoon! We stood and waited, somewhat grateful for therespite from the breakneck pace we'd been keeping, and took in theview of the various astronauts and other guests. Guenter Wendthobbled his way through the line at one point, a young girl helpinghim to walk – presumably he was on his way to the euphemism – and atthe same time Gene Kranz walked by. I wondered who the guests wereagainst the far wall who were wearing flight suits; I knew therewere shuttle astronauts there, but I couldn't identify them onsight, with the exception of Hoot Gibson, who I didn't see. I sawRusty Schweickart still signing away, and next to him Brian Binnie,pilot of the second flight of SpaceShipOne. I regret I never spoketo him. Actually, I did not meet all the astronauts I wanted tomeet, and I didn't speak to any one of them for as long as I wouldhave wanted to.As we stood, we considered using our cut-in-line privilege, but weboth just felt, I dunno, funny about doing that. We stood,increasingly bored, making up nonsense names for the man we wereabout to meet. Baron Von Alan Finneus Claudius Thaddius Bean XIII,esquire. Lord Ignatius Newhan Brainiac Alan Bedford Ronald BeanIII, number 48 of the Boston Red Sox. Alan Boomerang VaccuumCleaner Balfagor Bean the Magnificent.But now one of the two principal organizers of the event, SteveHankow, came down the line looking for Platinum tickets, andescorted a group of ten or twenty of us to the front of the line.The man who happened to be next in line at that point raised quite afuss. He turned out to be the same guy who was in front of us whenwe were in line for Scott Carpenter's autograph; that line had beentied up for about fifteen minutes by some fanatic with a ponytailwho had dozens of posters he wanted signed (I'm betting he's goingto wait until the astronauts die and then cash in and make a fortuneon all those posters). Now the same guy who had been commiseratingwith us about Ponytail Man was raising a fuss about us going aheadof him. And even though Mr. Hankow explained that we paid throughthe nose for those Platinum tickets and the accompanying privilegeto go to the head of the line, the guy was not going to back down.So Mr. Hankow came to us, explained that the guy was about to havea "major meltdown" and asked if we would mind if he went ahead ofus. I was just happy to have bypassed as much of the line as wealready had, so I didn't care. The guy went ahead and seemed to bepleased.When it was my turn, I once again had trouble thinking of what tosay. I had many questions for Alan Bean, but all I could think ofto say was, "I love listening to the tapes from Apollo 12. It'sobvious you guys were having a great time."Bean smiled broadly. "Oh, it was great!" He talked about what abreathtaking experience it was and how much fun it was to walk onthe Moon.I said, "Well, you guys were the best of friends, weren't you?"Referring to Bean, Commander Pete Conrad and Command Module PilotDick Gordon."Yeah, we were friends," Bean said, "but the main thing Pete Conradalways told me was, `if you can't make it fun, at least make itmemorable.' And boy, was it memorable!" He added, "Yeah, we werefriends, not just me and Pete Conrad, but Dick Gordon too." And hepointed down the line, and there was Dick Gordon signingautographs! That was the first of two times that Dick Gordon turnedout to be right by me and I hadn't realized it.As I left Bean's table, he said, "Thanks for your kind comments."That was my only encounter with Alan Bean during the event. That'stoo bad, I wish I had seen more of him. Of all the astronauts Imet, I think I liked him the most. He was so genuinely friendly, sopleasant to talk to, so at peace with himself. He's an old man, buthe still has the eyes of a child. I would have been pleased anddelighted to have dinner with him. If I ever have the chance to dothis again, he'll be one of my top choices.That was it for the autographs. Gene Cernan had arrived, but I wasdeep in money shock by this time, so I decided to forego theautograph and simply make a point of talking to him at the banquetthat evening.We left the autograph show, reconnoitered a bit, and decided to getchanged for the banquet; we didn't think we'd have time to do thatafter the launch. I changed first, and as I was waiting for Amy tochange, I saw Buzz come out of the autograph show and go into thebathroom. For a moment, I thought, y'know, actually, suddenly Ireally have to go . . . but I decided against it. I'd get a chanceto talk to Buzz that evening.Amy came out of the bathroom, looking stunning in her flowingdress. It was a shame we'd have to sit out at the causeway – on theground – for hours before the banquet. We took our place in line atabout 4:15. The launch was scheduled for 7:39.When we arrived at the causeway, I wondered where to sit. Therewere no stands, no seats, no pavilion, nothing. It was just a bankby a body of water known to contain alligators. But as soon as wegot off the bus, by God, there was the shuttle! It was dead ahead,right there, on the far bank! We were about four and a half milesaway. We could clearly see the tower, the external tank, the solidrockets boosters, and we could make out the distinct shape of theorbiter, dead on, facing us! It was too far away to make out thecolors, the entire stack looked gray, but its shape was unmistakable.We decided to spread our casual clothes out on the ground and sit onthem. What else could we do? We sat down and waited. People canget used to anything. Here we were with the space shuttle Atlantisright over there! and we sat bored. Amy was hungry, the line to theconcession stand was ridiculously long, and the snacks and drinkswere exorbitantly priced. They really milk every cent they can getout of you at KSC.Even so, she decided to get a drink and a bag of pretzels. So withan hour until launch, she stood in line and I read my book.Sometimes I would look up and take a glance at the shuttle. It washard to read, sitting on the lumpy ground with uncomfortable dresspants tugging at every seam, and of course I was afraid of tearingthem.When Amy returned, we had about twenty minutes until the scheduledlaunch time. We had no way of knowing whether things wereproceeding on time; there was no squawk box, no countdown clock, noscreen. The thing would launch or it wouldn't.As we got closer to launch time, I began to think about the sevenastronauts and what they were going through. I thought about thecommunication going on between them, dead ahead of me, and launchcontrol, about ten degrees to the left. I thought about the factthat within an hour they would be in space. In space! This wasn'ta science fiction movie, this wasn't news coverage on CNN, no, I waslooking at a real spacecraft carrying real heroes who were about totravel farther and faster than I probably ever will, who were aboutto service a real space station. We've come a long way since thedays when space flight was confined to pulp magazines and Sundaycomics.I overheard someone say "Five minutes to go." I stood to look atthe shuttle."Is it time?" Amy asked."I just can't sit anymore," I said half-truthfully.That was when I noticed the gantry at the top of the shuttle wasswinging aside. I pointed that out. "Really?" Amy exclaimed. "Oh,yeah!""If they're swinging that over, they're ready to go," I said.With no countdown, I didn't know when to expect launch, so I watchedthe shuttle intently. Without warning, there was a brilliant flareof light at the base of the shuttle. In contrast to the shuttle'scolorless gray, brought on by distance, the light of the mainengines was a clear, brilliant yellow-orange. I pointed it out toAmy, who had apparently not been watching when the engines ignited.Then came that cloud of white smoke. Just like on television, itpoured up and around, completely surrounding the shuttle. Soon theentire tower was completely surrounded by almost a perfect sphere ofpuffy white cloud. For a moment I was afraid I wouldn't see theshuttle again, forgetting momentarily that it would soon bestreaking across the sky.Before I knew it, the shuttle rose majestically out of the puff ofsteam, the same gray shape that had sat on the pad for so long, butnow trailing an explosive flare of intolerable glare and alengthening white contrail that looked like a huge, insubstantialworm.Everyone has seen shuttle launches on TV, but I can't stressenough: it doesn't look like that! Somehow the process of filmingeliminates the predominant impressions. One, of course, is thesound; no one would be surprised to hear that. At this time,though, the sound had not yet reached us. No, even more than thesound, the most spectacular characteristic of the rising shuttle wasthe blinding light. The train of yellow fire was as bright as thesun. It looked exactly as if a welding torch were flying into thesky. It was difficult to look at. I didn't want to miss anything,but at the same time I worried that staring straight at it mightdamage my eyes. I tried to watch the shuttle itself, but it wasnearly obscured by the glare. I could only flit my eyes back andforth between what I could see of the shuttle and the whitecontrail, and occasionally try to fix my eyes on the light glareitself.The shuttle was about halfway to the zenith when the sound started.It wasn't exactly like distant thunder, more like a train rushingtoward you. It was a continual roar. As it washed over us, itsounded exactly like the roar we had heard in the shuttle simulator,a continual pounding roar. The ground shook. My ears rememberedthe sensation of being violently vibrated in the simulator. Butalmost as quickly as it began, the sound died away. I never heard asonic boom.On the news, it always looked like the shuttle arced far over. Inretrospect it wasn't very bright of me, but I expected the shuttleto arc until it was traveling parallel to the ground. It didarc a little bit, of course, in order to travel to the correct pointin the sky, but I still was surprised that I had to continuallycrane my head back to watch the shuttle climb straight up into thesky.Then the solid rocket boosters jettisoned. Someone said, "There itgoes!" I knew what was going on, but I didn't see the rocketsthemselves. I only saw the now-distant point of light separate intoa shower of sparks. It looked almost exactly like the debris leftafter the Columbia disintegrated. Intellectually, I knew I had justseen a standard procedure, but an irrational part of my brainwondered if I had just seen a tragedy. I wasn't completelyreassured until I again spotted the distant light of the mainengines, still climbing into the sky. Now they were behind acloud. I looked away for a moment, and when I searched for thespeck of light again, I had lost it. The shuttle had gone. It wasover.I stood staring at the white contrail, now beginning to dispersedown by the pad, and I wondered how long it would remain. At thepad there was a sort of yellow haze. The contrail, though nowwidening at the base, was still clear, and more distinct the fartherup I looked. There was no mistaking the signs that a shuttle hadjust launched.With the excitement over, everyone moved back to the buses, butthere was a jubilant air in the crowd. We had witnessed somethingrare and special. Not just a shuttle launch, but one of the lastshuttle launches. We had seen national heroes embarking on anadventure in which we could enjoy only vicarious participation.There were cell phone calls, hushed and breathless conversation, thebus driver had a radio tuned in to the transmissions betweenAtlantis and Mission Control in Houston, there was some applause asthe correspondent announced an uneventful climb to orbit. Amy textmessaged her mother and brother. Strangers talked to strangers in acasual and friendly way that you don't find much these days.As we pulled away from the causeway, it looked to me like the launchpad was on fire. Several spots along the mobile launch pad and theservice tower were glowing with bright, flickering lights. Since Inever heard anything more about it, it must not have been a bigdeal. Maybe the pad always catches fire and there are standardprecautions to deal with it. Or maybe I wasn't seeing fires at all.The positive feeling persisted all the way back to the Visitors'Center. In addition to the exhilaration of the launch, and thecontinuing upbeat mission coverage, we had plenty of time for thebanquet. We would be back in plenty of time to catch our bus, getto our hotel, and make it to the Holiday Inn.Or so we thought. From one of the most magnificent highlights ofthe trip, I now come to the greatest frustration. When we returnedto the Visitors Center, we went outside to catch the bus, and therewere no buses in sight. Okay, no big deal. Our shuttle buses hadbeen co-opted for the trip to the causeway, so it only makes sensethey'd need some time to unload and pull around to pick us up.So . . . we waited.And waited. And waited. And waited.A few other attendees to the autograph show were gathered around,and they didn't know what was going on either. At one point wespotted our British friend Mark Lee, who was walking away from theVisitors' Center. After a time I decided to wander back toward theticket booths to see if I could spot any buses. There were none.It was getting dark. The Visitors' Center was shutting down.People were leaving in droves. There were no buses. There was noannouncement. There was no sign of the event organizers.We waited. And waited. And waited.The banquet was the one big perk about the Platinum ticket – aprivate dinner with the astronauts. A chance to mingle at will. Anintimate evening to talk to whichever living legend we wished.We waited. And waited. And waited.An older couple asked me if I knew what was going on; I didn't. Ikept my eye on the Visitors' Center, searching for any sign of abus. It was nighttime. The parking lot was emptying itself ofcars. We heard that traffic was at a standstill.Finally someone came along and asked if we were with the autographshow. A chorus of grouchy "yes!" He told us our buses were loadingat gates four, five, and six. The problem was, none of us had anyidea where gates four, five, and six were.I have to wonder what the security guard thought. The center wasclosing down, it was virtually empty now, janitors were cleaningup . . . and suddenly here comes an angry-looking army of well-dressed people marching toward him. I guess it's a good thing hedidn't reach for his gun.Somehow I ended up leading the mob, along with the guy who had toldus where the buses were loading, and I explained the situation tothe guard, and that we still didn't know where we were supposed togo. Visibly rattled, he spoke to someone on his walkie-talkie, thenled us back through the Visitors' Center to where the tour busesusually load. There were three buses, one of which was partiallyfull. This, we were told, was the bus to the Holiday Inn. The busto the Courtyard by Marriott was the last one.Amy and I, surprise surprise, were the only ones in our group goingto the Courtyard by Marriott. So once again we ended up sittingalone on a bus.So we waited. And waited. And waited.Eventually a woman came to the bus and told us they were combiningbuses, so we were to get off and board the middle bus. Middle?Well, sort of. The first bus, the one going to the Holiday Inn, hadlong since left. So we boarded the middle bus . . . and once againwere the only people aboard.We waited. And waited. And waited. We were furious. We weremissing the banquet. The bus driver told us he would leave as soonas "everyone else" showed up. No one was coming. It was 9:00. Aloudspeaker announced that the bus to the Courtyard was boarding inthe tour area. No one showed up. Employees were leaving. The busdriver told us that if no one else came, we would leave by 9:10. Noone else came. We didn't leave.Finally an announcement evidently came over that the bus was leavingnow, so anyone going to the Courtyard had better board immediately.So we finally left.Somewhat heartened, I remarked that we may yet make it, since themost pessimistic estimate we had heard that day was that the banquetmay start as late as 10:00. Amy showed me her watch: it was 9:30.It was a forty-five-minute drive to our hotel, and from there we hadto fight the launch day traffic to the Holiday Inn. There was noway. And the next morning at 9:00 was a lecture by Gene Kranz thatI did not want to miss. A perfect day was turning into a disaster.The bus driver was very accommodating – he took us by a back routethat avoided the horrendous traffic which we were told was at astandstill. The route took us through Cape Canaveral, and he gaveus a mini tour as we went through.When we finally arrived at our hotel, we thanked him for the tourand rushed off to the Holiday Inn. Amazingly, though the traffic onA1A was still slow when our bus tried to worm through, things hadreally cleared up by the time we set off, and we were at the HolidayInn within minutes. It remained to be seen whether we had missedthe banquet – or could even find where it was being held.We went into the lobby to a familiar sight – people standing aroundeverywhere. I wanted to explore, Amy didn't. That's alsofamiliar: any time we're in a new place, I want to scope it out andfigure out where things are, Amy wants to stop and make a "plan" – Inever did understand that; how do you make a "plan" if you don'tknow where anything is? But anyway . . .Things picked up when out of the crowd stepped Gene Cernan. That'sa pretty good clue. Wherever the Last Man on the Moon is is where Iwant to be, and I said so. As he walked by us, he evidently saw ourPlatinum tickets, because he said, "I'm just trying to figure outwhere I want to be."I said, "Wherever you want to be is where we want to be, so I guesswe'll follow you."We followed him up the stairs and into a large banquet hall which,on first glance, was utter mayhem. This private dinner with theastronauts which I had been so feverishly looking forward to hadmore the feel of a frat party. People were standing aroundeverywhere drinking and shouting and clumped in chaotic groups, aliberal mixing of shabby-looking guests in shorts to more refined-looking people to astronauts here and there, some people noticeablydrunk, some strewn across couches and chairs. There were tables,many of which had plates of half-eaten dinners. There was noorganization of any kind. Some inquiry confirmed that Gene Kranzhad already left, since he had to get up early for his lecture.Confused, disheartened, and distinctly out of place, we stood in thebuffet line and got some beef. Fuming, we sat at a random table tocool ourselves down and work out what we wanted to do. Clearly wehad missed a sizeable portion of the banquet; in fact it appeared tobe breaking up now. All that money and we had missed it!I scarcely noticed that we had, by chance, sat down right next toGuenter Wendt! He was busy talking to someone, though; I wassecretly relieved, being at that moment in no mood to be meetingcelebrities.Gradually, as we calmed down, we began to perceive a slight patternin the madness. I recovered some of my awe at being in the presenceof astronauts, and I felt ready to try some mingling. First thing,though, was to eat. We had not been served drinks, so I went to thebar to order soft drinks – I wasn't sure I could get any, since allI saw were alcoholic drinks – but fortunately I was able to get aSprite for Amy and a Coke for myself. Neither of us drinks, since Ihave had unpleasant experiences with alcohol. While standing inline, I was dismayed to see that Al Worden was quite drunk. Now,don't get me wrong, he's a national hero, he can do what he wants.But because of my aforementioned unpleasant experiences withalcohol, I therefore had no desire to talk to him that evening.That was a disappointment, because otherwise I would have been quiteexcited to spend some time chatting with him. If only we'd arrivedsooner! . . .We ate. The beef was rare, but good. (I like my meat burnt.) Thenwe set off to meet some astronauts.We joined the group huddled around Gene Cernan. Here was a man Igreatly admired, a winner in every way. Not only was he aMoonwalker, but he was the commander of one of the Moon missions.He was the commander of one of the "J" missions, one of the missionswith the lunar rover. He lived on the Moon for three whole days.And then there's his place in history: The Last Man on the Moon.And to top it off, he's the astronaut you want an astronaut to be.Deeply enthusiastic, eloquent, able to reach back in time and bringhis mission into the present with poetic descriptions and all thesheer emotion that you want out of a space explorer.I asked him a question that had been burning for a long time. Why,I asked him, when the lunar module and command module separated, wasthe command module far down below, much closer to the Moon than thelunar module was? That's counterintuitive. He explained that thealtitude of an orbit determines an object's velocity, and what theywanted to do required a change in the command module's velocity.But, he said, this was a question for a command module pilot.And suddenly there was Dick Gordon! For the second time, DickGordon had been standing right by me and I didn't know it. Cernanasked him to answer my question, and Gordon explained a concept Ialready knew, that an object in a lower orbit is moving faster thanan object in a higher orbit, and so in order to increase itsvelocity, the command module had to drop closer to the Moon. Irealized then that I had been proceeding from a false assumption:the lunar module was not climbing up, away from the command module,as I thought from watching the films; instead the command module wasdropping down away from the lunar module in order to reach a lowerand therefore faster orbit. Suddenly Cernan exploded, "I neverunderstood that! Why would you speed up in a lower orbit?"Gordon patiently explained, "Because you're in a tighter circlearound a stationary object . . . " And suddenly they were off. Iinadvertently started an argument between Gene Cernan and DickGordon. They got louder and louder, until finally Cernan poked hishead above the crowd and shouted, "Buzz!" Presumably he wassummoning Buzz because of his expertise in orbital rendezvous –which had in no small part made the Apollo missions possible.That was when a fire alarm sounded! I have to wonder if this is howastronauts react when the master alarm sounds aboard theirspacecraft: no one paid the slightest attention. I wondered if weshould be evacuating or something, but since no one seemed alarmed,I figured it must be a false alarm. It turned out one of the chefshad ignited a flame that tripped the alarm.As we wandered around, we came across Sy Liebergot. He was one ofthe few who had no one gathered around him. I guess in comparisonto men who walked on the Moon, EECOM doesn't attract much interest.So we went over and said hi. He asked what we were doing. Iexplained we had just arrived, and Amy told him we were justwandering around meeting people."Well, you just met somebody," he said. Amy thought he had a traceof irritation.I told him I had enjoyed his lecture. He said he felt the audienceattending this event was mature enough to be interested in atechnical talk. He didn't know if he had lost people, but he feltit was worth a try. I told him I was fascinated by that stuff. Iasked him about his Mission Control screen, how quickly he couldabsorb all that data that refreshed every second. He told me thatthe Soviet data only refreshed once a minute – which I thought wouldbe a relief. But he seemed to much prefer the American system, fast-paced though it was. In fact, if I understood him correctly, hefelt that even refreshing once a second was too slow.We got onto the subject of his book, which I hadn't read, and itsaccompanying CD-ROM. He asked me to stop by his table the next dayand he would show me the screens which were printed in the back ofthe book and walk me through them. I told him I definitely would.He complimented Amy's dress.We moved on, having had a thoroughly engaging, friendly talk with ahero of the Apollo era. A very friendly man, Sy Liebergot. He hasno trace of an ego. He's a guy you can imagine working with. Or atleast I can; having worked in a technical job, I suppose perhapsI've worked with people of similar background and personality. Onceagain I wondered if I could handle a job at Mission Control.Well, I came here to meet Buzz Aldrin, and there was Buzz Aldrin.Naturally he had attracted quite a crowd, and he looked prettytired. I debated whether I wanted to bug him, especially after hisunfriendly air that morning, but . . . well, Buzz! I had to meetBuzz. So we joined that clump of people.He was, quite obviously, talking about Apollo 11. I had resolved toask as few questions as possible, if any, about Apollo 11. I have atheory that he's insecure about his status as the second man on theMoon, and I think he's spent the past thirty-seven yearsovercompensating for having not gotten out first. The entire Apollo11 experience, it seems to me (and I could be wrong) seems to be anunhappy memory for him.I listened to his answer to someone's Apollo 11 question,increasingly intrigued.He was talking about how he had given himself communion on the Moon –a little-known fact that has never really been made overly public,though it's no longer a secret either. Knowing he had done that,and that he was a church elder, I wondered about his currentreligious views. He had said in an interview not long before thathe would not have given himself communion on the Moon had he gonethere today. I heard him saying, "I read a statistic thismorning . . . " Buzz has a very slow and halting way ofspeaking . . . "that 70% of Americans believe in . . .creation . . . instead of . . . evolution." I stood, holding mybreath, waiting for what he was going to say about that. "And Ifind that . . . very sad." Whew! I let out my breath, relieved.The woman he was speaking to finally moved off, and what do youknow, I had an opening to speak to Buzz Aldrin. In perhaps a higheroctave than is normal for me, I asked, "Do you mind if I asked youabout the Semi-Cycler?"The Cycler and the Semi-Cycler are concepts Buzz has proposed forcontinual round-trips between Earth and Mars.Buzz stepped up to me, leaned forward, stared directly into my eyes,and asked, "The Cycler or the Semi-Cycler?""Well, I guess the Semi-Cycler," I said. "I think I pretty wellunderstand the Cycler." At that, he straightened, lookingstartled. Hoping I hadn't committed a faux pas, I explained that Ididn't see the energy savings in the Semi-Cycler, since it wouldhave to continually blast away from Earth, slow down to orbit Mars,then blast away again.No, he corrected me, the Cycler is on a continuous orbit . . .Well, I was talking to Buzz Aldrin, so I decided not to correct himand tell him I wanted to know about the Semi-Cycler, not theCycler . . . but I needn't bother anyway. As it turned out, he wassimply using the Cycler for reference. Presently he moved on toexplain the Semi-Cycler. It would orbit the Earth, slingshot toMars, orbit Mars, slingshot to Earth, etc. Okay, I knew that . . .but wouldn't that necessitate using fuel? I didn't have a chance toask that question, because now Buzz was off on a continuous train ofthought.Well, I can research the Semi-Cycler on my own – surely there's gotto be a book somewhere – I was just glad I had evidently asked theright question. Buzz was on a roll.He described NASA's current plans for Mars. "Using a solid rocketto go to Mars is not a good idea," he said. "Why use a lot of fuelto get there faster, when you can use very little fuel and get thereslower? What's the rush?" He asked me what the big picture was. Ihad my own ideas of the big picture, but I didn't know what answerhe was looking for. "Well . . . " I started to say.Well, Buzz's big picture was permanence. The word I had in mind wascolonization, but I hadn't wanted to say that; most people considerthat outlandish and unrealistic. Not Buzz. He went through NASA'svarious plans for Mars, and asked after each description, "Is thatpermanent?" In each case the answer was no.What Buzz was getting at was a regular, low-cost way of traveling toMars and back – a space subway, so to speak. If we're going tocolonize Mars, he said, there has to be a way of making the triproutine. I began to understand why he had seemed so unfriendly thatmorning: Buzz just isn't a people person. I think when he wassigning autographs, he was simply on autopilot. When I approachedhim at the banquet, he was neither friendly nor unfriendly. Hemight be perceived as uninviting, but when you ask him a question,he will answer in full. He may not have the personality you want ina national hero, but I suspect that he is a true genius. I hadnever been in the company of a true genius before; it was aninteresting experience. He didn't need to be friendly with me, itwas enough to listen to him, to watch as he periodically retreatedinto his own mind to retrieve data and attempt to convert that datainto words. Somehow his internalized demeanor ceased to be off-putting for me, and I truly hope I have a chance to meet himagain . . . especially as the more he talked, the more uncomfortableI became. There was a sense of vertigo, like back in elementaryschool when teachers were yelling at me. But there was no reason tobe intimidated by Buzz! What was the matter with me?By this time I was feeling weak and nauseous, a reaction I sometimeshave to lack of sleep. We had gotten up early each morning forseveral days and overexerted ourselves, and evidently I had noteaten or drunk enough. It became increasingly difficult toconcentrate on what Buzz was saying, let alone participate in theconversation. When he paused, I leaned over and asked Amy to orderme a Coke. She did.The Coke felt good. Buzz was all over colonizing Mars now, but Iwas just trying to regain my strength. Finally, I told Amy, "I'vegot to sit down."There were plenty of people anxious to talk to Buzz, so it's notlike he found himself in a vacuum. Still, I was furious withmyself. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to talk to Buzz Aldrin, aman I've always admired, a man who walked on another world, a manwhose name will be remembered for thousands of years . . . a man whohad to pass all manner of physical endurance tests, and I couldn'tendure standing around talking about Mars! Could my bout of vertigopossibly have struck at a worse time?A glass of orange juice later, I felt better. I rejoined Buzz, whowas still talking about Mars. I listened, still embarrassed, hopinghe would notice that I was back.At one point I turned around and spotted Mark Lee! I was payingattention to Buzz, but Amy talked to Mark about the Great BusDebacle. Actually, I was gratified that someone had arrived evenlater than we had. Now Amy was suggesting we leave and get somesleep. That was a good idea if we were going to catch Gene Kranz'slecture. But I felt I was skipping out on Buzz. And even if Buzzdidn't care . . . I did.We left.Then we slept in and missed Gene Kranz's lecture. I woke up at6:30. I woke Amy up and told her we still had time to getthere. "You got five hours of sleep," she insisted. "You almostpassed out last night." Exaggeration. "You don't want to be deadwhen you have dinner with Ed Mitchell." She rolled over and wentback to sleep.I should have insisted. I should have gotten up and gone alone.And if I was going to miss the lecture, I should have stayed uplater last night and talked to Buzz more. I should have, I shouldhave . . . fact is, I didn't. I can't change what was. I got sickin front of Buzz Aldrin and I missed Gene Kranz's lecture. That'swhat happened, that's it.I lay there awake, thinking about what I was missing. This was GeneKranz's last public appearance. I would not have this opportunityagain. I had walked out on Buzz Aldrin – meeting Buzz Aldrin wasthe original reason I had wanted to come here – I had left BuzzAldrin in hopes of catching Gene Kranz's lecture . . . now I hadmissed out on both. Damn it! I would spend the rest of the triplistening to people telling how wonderful Kranz's lecture was. Andunless I have another chance to meet Buzz, I'll spend the rest of mylife remembering that I lost the chance to have an in-depthdiscussion about the future of space colonization with the ManHimself.We got up about 9:30, we took our time, we went to Waffle House forbreakfast, we walked on Cocoa Beach, I tried to remember the goodthings that had happened up to then and think ahead to the excitingevening to come. And after all, I had met Buzz Aldrin and talked tohim for about half an hour; how many people can say that? What morecould I have hoped for? It's not like we were likely to become bestbuddies.So enough dwelling on what's past. We went to KSC on the noon bus.The first thing we did was grab some lunch. Pizza. It was prettygood. If you can launch spaceships, build space stations, send mento the Moon and Mars, and make good pizza, you're okay in my book.Mark Lee happened by and joined us. He showed us a hat he had beengiven many years ago, which a friend had told him was from "Iggy."Mark had racked his brain trying to figure out who "Iggy" mightbe . . . until he found a hidden inscription inside the hat'slining: "E. E. Aldrin, July 21, 1969." Pretty exciting at first,but why would Buzz Aldrin have signed a hat while he was on the Moon?Well, Mark decided to settle the matter. When he met Buzz, heshowed him the hat . . . and Buzz didn't recognize it. So much forthat.As promised, we stopped in the autograph show to drop by SyLiebergot's table. What do you know, Mark was there too! Heintroduced us to Sy as his "American friends" – a strange thing tosay to an American, I thought. Sy remembered us – he mentionedAmy's dress from the night before; evidently it had made quite animpression, since Gene Cernan had also complimented her. We talkedfor quite a while, again touched on his Mission Control experiences,the fact that the flight controllers get little recognition. He'sparticularly annoyed that while he was trying to figure out what waswrong with Apollo 13, reporters were leaning against his console tophotograph all the astronauts who were clustered around the CapCom'sconsole!Then I found out that if you bought Sy's book, he would autograph itfor free. The book was only $20, so I figured why not? Our buddySy. By now we really were feeling like Sy was an old friend. Withall the other celebrity guests, there hadn't been much morethan "pleasure to meet you," "thank you," that's it. We had stoodaround chatting with Sy Liebergot the previous evening and today.He's very approachable and unpretentious. He may not be anastronaut, but I'd be happy to have dinner with him if I ever go toan event like this again.He personalized his autograph for both of us. Amy was specificabout the spelling of her name, "Amy with a `Y'."Sy wondered how else you'd spell Amy."You see a lot of strange spellings these days," Amy said. "A-M-I,A-I-M-E-E –""Aw, bullshit," Sy said. I think I now have a very clear image ofthe exact tone and demeanor in which Sy originally reported thatApollo 13's troubles were an "instrumentation problem," an error hiscolleagues still rib him about.After hanging out with Sy, we decided to ride the shuttle simulatoragain. Things did not go as smoothly as they had the day before;the simulation was having technical difficulties. It wasn't asafety issue, it was the film and audio which accompany. Some weredismissive of that, but I can see how a problem with the visual andaudio would destroy the illusion of being inside a shuttle. So wewaited while they cycled through the simulation a few times.As we waited, we got to talking to the girl standing in front ofus. It turned out she had just graduated from college and workedpart-time at a NASA facility. I described to her my captioning workand she told me there were lots of positions for captioners in NASA.Not that I disbelieve her, but I think those positions are filled bycontractors – one of which is my former company. But maybe it'ssomething worth checking out.A lot of people gave up and left, but we did end up riding thesimulator. Knowing now what to expect, I relaxed and pretended itwas real. It was just as thrilling the second time around.Next we stopped once again at the gift shop and I got a toy. Yep,I'm thirty-two and I got a big, three-foot-long Saturn-V stack whichcan separate into all the individual stages. The Apollo CSM comesout, you can open up the S-IV-B and pull out the lunar module,attach it to the CSM, the lunar module itself separates into theascent and descent stages, as well as having realisticallyretractable legs, and the command module detaches from the servicemodule, complete with a heat shield – and you can open it up and seethe astronauts. The Saturn-V S-1C even has a button you can push tohear the countdown and the rumble of the launch, and the stackvibrates. It's great!It was time to catch the bus to return to our hotel in order to getready for the much-anticipated dinner with Ed Mitchell. On the busI talked for some time with someone named Brian – I forget his lastname; I want to say Binnie, but obviously that can't be right! –about our mutual interest in space. He told me about his wife, whois most decidedly not a space nut, and how much trouble he was goingto be in when she found out how much money he spent. I told him howI was the financially responsible one in my family, but I hadsplurged my budget for the next two months on this trip.A common question from many people we met was "Which one of you isthe space nut?" Well, of course the answer was me, but it didn'ttake long for Amy to catch the bug. She started answeringwith, "Well, before this trip, he was, but now we both are."When we returned to KSC two hours later, we both felt underdressed.Brian had been to these events before and told us we looked fine.So I was wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, Amy was casuallydressed in shorts and a white shirt with a flower. The flowerpassed the shirt off as a Hawaiian shirt in her mind.So what's the deal with the Hawaiian shirts? Legendary Mercuryastronaut Wally Schirra had just died a month before. He wasscheduled to attend the event. Since he was a notorious jokesterwho habitually showed up at formal functions in a Hawaiian shirt, wewere all asked to wear Hawaiian shirts in memory of Wally. I'm surehe'd have no problem with us showing up to a glitzy reception intennis shoes and shorts, but we both felt self-conscious as more andmore people boarded the bus wearing suits and ties. Fortunately wehad thought ahead; we had a bag in which we had brought suit pantsfor me and a skirt for her.Before our bus left our hotel, Mark Lee boarded the bus. He was acurious sight; his Hawaiian shirt was unbuttoned, he was winded andcovered with sweat. Well, it didn't seem tactful to ask, but hetold us anyway.He had checked out of the Courtyard that morning, intending to spendthe night at a different, cheaper motel farther north. Whilekilling time at KSC, he decided to take the NASA Up-Close tour –which is a fairly lengthy tour in which you leave the bus many timesto explore the various facilities, and at the Saturn-V Center yousee several shows. Well, our buses left KSC promptly at 4:00 totake us back to our hotels to prepare for the gala. Mark's tour gotback to the Visitors' Center too late and he missed the bus. Cometo think of it, we had wondered where he was.He went to the gate and explained the situation, hoping someonewould be able to give him a ride to the Courtyard – he needed hisluggage and he wanted to check in to his new motel. As it happened,two Platinum holders walked by and overheard his predicament. Theyoffered to drive him back to the hotel.During the drive, Mark realized he still didn't have a Hawaiianshirt. He asked the two guys where was the good place to get one;well, they were as new to the area as he was! They didn't know. Sowhen they passed a random surf shop, he asked to be let off. He ranin, bought a Hawaiian shirt for a couple dollars, and then ran tothe Courtyard, where he picked up his luggage. Then he ran all theway to the motel where he planned on spending the night, checked in,put his luggage in his room, and then ran all the way back to theCourtyard . . . arriving just in time to catch the bus.The Luck of Mark Lee. Sounds like a good title for a novel, doesn'tit?After being escorted right through the security gate like VIPs andonto the buses for the Saturn-V Center, we changed clothes rightthere on the bus. We both felt much better then.For the first time the entire trip, the buses were punctual. Wearrived at the Saturn-V Center right on schedule. We were greetedformally at the door, told to enjoy ourselves, and went in.The sight was incredible. Oh, I had been in the Saturn-V Centerbefore, but with fancy tables set up everywhere, a wine bar, andordinary people and astronauts all around, many in suits and tiesand many more in suits and Hawaiian shirts, I felt like we hadarrived in the middle of the Academy Awards.Except that these weren't a bunch of undereducated actors; thesewere the cream of America's intellectual crop, and they had donethings and been places the rest of us can only try to imagine. Westood in line for our drinks two places behind Jim Lovell.Astronauts were everywhere. After we got our drinks, I wasprospecting our table and Buzz Aldrin squeezed his way past me. Isaid hello to him, but he didn't seem to hear.As we waited for things to settle down, a woman stepped up to us andintroduced herself as Susan Swing. We introduced ourselves. Sheasked where we were from and we told her Neptune Beach. It turnedout we were practically neighbors – she was from Jacksonville Beach,the beach right next to us and well within walking distance. And ontop of that, her workplace was right behind Amy's! To top off thatintriguing coincidence – I thought she was joking at first when shetold us this – she had been dating Ed Mitchell for the past twoyears.I wonder if she'll keep her promise to stop in at Publix to order acake from Amy. We may not be done with Ed Mitchell yet.Gradually people began to migrate to their tables. About half of uswere there when Ed Mitchell himself arrived. He came around thetable, shook our hands, asked us our names. Each person at thetable introduced him- or herself. Susan Swing told him theinteresting coincidence that we were from Neptune Beach.Unfortunately the noise in the room was overpowering, and Dr.Mitchell had trouble hearing us. Even so, it was like enteringanother world, to be sitting at a table with Astronaut Ed Mitchell –right underneath the vast Saturn-V which is suspended from theceiling and runs the entire length of the center. I kept lookingfrom Dr. Mitchell up to that awesome Saturn-V, trying to comprehendthat this quiet, unassuming old man had ridden that thing into orbitand blasted himself to the Moon!The room did not become any quieter. Even as we were served ourdinners, Al Worden stepped up to a temporary stage that had been setup near the theater entrance of the Saturn-V Center andannounced, "Well, it was pretty hard for us to arrange to have alaunch during this event, but we finally did it."I feel bad for those who sat with Al Worden; he spent most of thedinner on stage acting as emcee.He introduced each of the astronauts, asking each of them to stand.But when he came to Buzz Aldrin, Buzz was nowhere to be seen.Finally, someone out of my hearing range told him where Buzzwas. "Oh, Buzz is in the bathroom!"Worden was a riot. He regaled us with stories about Wally Schirraand his many high jinks, invited several speakers to remember Wally,among them Tom Stafford and Scott Carpenter, who had many kind wordsfor his fellow Mercury legend. The sound on the microphone keptfuzzing out during Stafford's speech. I thought he didn't notice,and it seemed no attempt was being made to fix the glitch. Butwhile telling us about Schirra's infamous "gotchas," Staffordsaid, "I think maybe Wally is among us somewhere and this soundproblem is one of his `gotchas'."At one point during Scott Carpenter's speech, a resounding crashcame from the far end of the center. Something metal hit the groundand sent a great echo through the room. Carpenter turned toward thesource of the noise and said, "Will you stop that, Wally?!"Incidentally, Amy remembers that one-liner coming from Tom Stafford,but I'm sure it was Carpenter.Worden capped things off by calling to the stage an unannouncedsurprise; he told us that no such event would be complete without aword from the original pioneer of manned space flight, the oneastronaut who made all future space endeavors possible. Someone Ididn't recognize stepped up beside him. Worden leaned over andasked, "Can you tell us your name please?"Oh, my God, by then I knew what was coming!"My name . . . Jose Jimenez."The entire Saturn-V chamber erupted in uproarious laughter!It was comedian Bill Dana, the honorary eighth Mercury astronaut,whose cowardly Hispanic caricature was much beloved by the originalseven, especially Alan Shepard. In 1984 Dana had sworn off the JoseJimenez character, feeling it was inappropriate for a non-Hispanicto play a Hispanic caricature. So that was one of the highlights ofthe trip; I was not expecting a performance of Jose Jimenez. It wasan utter delight.Then the auction began. The most exciting item auctioned was a mapof the Moon that was actually taken to the Moon by one of the Apollomissions, and which was now autographed by each of the Apolloastronauts at the sites of their landings. Someone at our table bidon it, but gave up when the price rose above $16,000.After that was a silent auction, during which we finally had achance to talk to Dr. Mitchell. He was asked some of the samequestions he had been asked at The Wonder of it All: "What was itlike working with Alan Shepard?" "When your radar went out, did youthink you wouldn't be able to land?" His answers were lengthy,detailed, and interesting – and they were exactly the same answershe had given at the movie. Verbatim. Obviously there are certainfrequently asked questions, and I imagine Dr. Mitchell is not theonly one who has prepared answers.I really wanted to ask a question he doesn't hear all the time, buthow can you really know? I asked him something that had not beenasked at the movie. "I understand that while you were on the Moon,you and Alan Shepard woke up during the night and heard a strangesound, and for a moment you thought the lunar module was tippingover." I was going to follow up by asking what the hell they wouldhave done if it had tipped over, but he started answering before Iwas finished asking."Well, we didn't actually think it was tipping over. It was justthat we landed on a bit of a grade, so we were tipped over a bit.We knew we were tilted and it wasn't going to tip over, but weweren't used to the one-sixth gee and it kind of felt like it mightwant to tip over, so we just kept peeking out the window just tomake sure."Next, someone asked him where his interest in the study of thenature consciousness began. "It began on our way back," hesaid. "I kept looking at the Earth and the Moon, and I looked atthe stars, and I became very powerfully aware that all the matter inour bodies came from the stars. Of course I knew that anyway, butthis was a really powerful emotional realization, and it happened tome several times during the trip back." Somehow his spiritualawakening (what else can I call it?) led him to question why it isthat we are aware, and he felt that the question of awareness wassomething that science had not attempted to tackle, and whichreligion was too archaic to tackle. He felt the truth must liesomewhere between religion and science. So it was to answer thatquestion that he founded the Institute on Noetic Sciences. And, headded, the Institute had made great strides in the past eight yearsin answering the question of consciousness. He said that quantumphysics was the key to understanding awareness.That piqued my curiosity; though I'm the farthest thing from aphysicist, I'm interested in physics, especially quantum physics,and I've done a lot of research on what principles of quantumphysics I'm capable of understanding. So I asked him if he couldexplain briefly how quantum physics was related to consciousness."It's a little dense," he said, "but I'll try." When he said that Ifelt a little like I had when I'd asked Buzz about the Semi-Cycler:I had asked the right question.Mitchell explained the fundamental concepts in quantum physics:resonance, entanglement, nonlocality, and coherence. To be brief,these attributes of matter violate special relativity; two entangledparticles "know" each other's spins, and will respond instantly toany change, no matter how far apart they are. Since no signal cantravel faster than light, by what means can one particle "know"another particle's spin? Mitchell explains the phenomenon byassigning entanglement as the basic unit of awareness. Since eachmolecule in our brains is composed of subatomic particles, Mitchelland his colleagues theorize that entanglement provides increasingawareness coupled with the complexity of an organism; the morecomplex the organism is, the more of those basic units of awarenessit has and therefore the more conscious it is.Amy was stunned by Mitchell's theory and now wants desperately toread his book. His ideas are right up her alley. As for myself,I'm not quite convinced; I'd need to read his book myself, but myfirst impression is there's more wishful thinking and speculationthan actual science in his theories. But then, I've never been tothe Moon and I can't calculate the trigonometry of an orbitalrendezvous, so I'll concede that a man a hundred times moreintelligent than I am who has studied this phenomenon for more yearsthan I have lived may know a smidge more about his own theories thanI do.Suddenly it was all over. Dinner ended. We were dismissed. Theastronauts left. We had hoped to do some mingling – since I hadmissed Gene Kranz's lecture and he hadn't been at the banquet thenight before, I had hoped to grab a chance to talk to him, but therewas no chance. We witnessed a joyous reunion between Gene Kranz,Alan Bean, and Ed Gibson, which somewhat surprised me, since Ithought there wasn't much personal contact between astronauts andMission Control. But it was nice to see the joy on their faces andhear their effusive small talk. What a history these men shared –and it unexpectedly came to life before us.As Alan Bean wandered off, we followed him, dodging people left andright, hoping to worm our way in and at least get a picture withhim, but he slipped his way out and we couldn't catch up.But we did bump into Sy Liebergot. He still remembered us. He saidhe hoped he'd see us at future events. We shook hands with him,said good-bye, and left him to once again be a disconnectedcelebrity whom we might as well never have met.So quite before we were ready, the whole spectacular experience wasover. Days later, I still caught myself looking around forastronauts. Every time I spotted an elderly, white-haired but fitman, I'd wonder if he was an astronaut. It was hard to come back toEarth. I could have spent another week among those men. I didn'tmeet any of the shuttle astronauts . . . I didn't meet Brian Binnie,who flew SpaceShipOne . . . I didn't meet Dee O'Hara, the astronautsnurse, who I'm sure Amy would have been interested in . . . or theguy who flew the helicopter that lost Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7capsule . . . or Bill Dana . . . I missed Gene Kranz's lecture andgot sick in front of Buzz Aldrin.But how much I did do and how many I did meet. I watched a shuttlelaunch. I met Buzz Aldrin. I had dinner with Ed Mitchell. I havea priceless collection of autographs. I have souvenirs andphotographs. And I have the memory, a memory I'll treasure for therest of my life. We live in a fortunate time, a time when many ofhistory's most important pioneers are still alive, and I wasprivileged to meet them. Buzz Aldrin, Al Worden, Gene Cernan,Charlie Duke, Ed Mitchell, Scott Carpenter, they're no longer namesout of history, they're no longer fading pictures in a book or spacesuited figures in a grainy film or crisp voices on a cracklyrecording. They're people, people I've come to respect and to likeas people. They're larger than life; that's unavoidable,considering what they did, where they stood, what they saw, but evenBuzz Aldrin puts his spacesuit on one pant leg at a time.Sy Liebergot is now a guy I know, a guy I could imagine beingfriends with. I'll never be able to watch Apollo 13 in quite thesame way again. He's no longer a historical figure. He's just aguy. I guy I really like. If I ever tend one of these events again(which I hope I can), I can base my choices on who to dine with onthat, who I like the best, who I have the most fun talking to,rather than solely their place in history. My perspective is a bit broader now. I haven't been to the Moon,but somehow just talking to someone who has makes a subtle yetprofound impact. These men are such heroes; you look into theireyes and they're just a bit different from the rest of us. But whenyou get to know them as people, when you get to learn who it is whotouched the Moon, as opposed to just their names and stats, youbegin to see just how much all of us are capable of.I've seen Buzz Aldrin go to the bathroom, I've seen Al Worden drunk,I've seen Ed Mitchell take his false teeth out . . . if these guys can go to the Moon, maybe I can do something equally great.