(18 Jul 2014) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus014071
Now's the time to get moonstruck.
Forty-five years ago Sunday, Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on another world. Armstrong's "one small step ... one giant leap" on the dusty lunar surface July 20, 1969, still stirs hearts.
Speaking in advance of the anniversary, Aldrin described to a crowd gathered at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum what he was thinking as he was about to step on the moon.
"So I backed went down the ladder backward just like every Navy guy does and I remembered the checklist said reach back and partially close the hatch," said Aldrin. "So I said I gotta reach back and partially close the hatch? Making care not to lock it on my way out. There was not even a handle on the outside."
Aldrin said it took him a while to figure out how best to walk on the lunar surface.
"On earth with the backpack like this guy has, we'd have weighed 360 pounds pretty heavy," said Aldrin. "But on the moon that's only 60 pounds so that means you have this mass but you're not being pulled down so you can kind of think you can turn, but the backpack wants to keep going so you have to make an allowance for that but you can go like this, turns out the best way, the way a horse gallops, you put one horse down, you recover from that, you stabilise, then lift off with this one, so it's like, boop, boop, boop, boop."
Aldrin, now 84, had fun telling the audience about the moon landing, even telling a few jokes.
"Now up in the top picture, there's a UFO (laughter)," joked Aldrin while watching video from the landing. "I think this ended up being called west crater, or a boulder field, that we didn't want to land on."
Joining Aldrin on stage was Mike Massimino, who who has been in space twice, including one trip to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.
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