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Graveyard spiral
Did bad judgment or bad luck doom JFK Jr.?
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[07/20/99]

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[07/19/99]

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From his salute to his father through his career at George, JFK Jr.'s triumphs were mostly style over substance.
By Bill Wyman
[07/18/99]

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The front doors open and Aldrin walks in, his hand in a sack of baked tortilla chips. He's wearing faded jeans and a neon-blue golf shirt. But Aldrin hasn't been golfing; he's been auditioning for a Saab commercial.

Pushing 70, with smoke-white hair and vivid, visionary eyes, Aldrin looks like a cross between Ken Kesey and the Wizard of Oz. The similarities transcend appearance. To his admirers, Aldrin is the ultimate Captain Trips: a brilliant intellect with the energy and expertise to lead us to the stars.

His aura of otherwordly celebrity is palpable. I'll be with Aldrin for hours, but I never forget who I'm talking to. Let's face it: Everest is difficult, but with enough time and willpower you can climb it. Circling the world in a balloon is dangerous and wacky, but primarily expensive. You can sneak into Mecca, dive the wreck of Titanic, and dogsled to the South Pole.

But no amount of time, money or ambition will get you to the moon. In all of history, only 12 humans have walked there. Tom Wolfe, Michael Jordan, even Madonna will someday be forgotten -- but Aldrin and Armstrong will not. They were the chosen, Earth's emissaries, at the dawn of the Space Age.

Despite these credentials, Aldrin has his detractors as well. A small but visible cadre of critics -- including some former astronauts -- are cynical about his big plans and Wizard-like bluster. He's drawing too much attention to himself. He has something to sell. The fact that what he's selling is the future of spaceflight -- citizen explorers, orbiting hotels and sightseeing trips to the moon -- matters not. Flyboys, no matter how they milk the system (and even the taciturn Armstrong isn't above an occasional TV pitch), are expected to be discreet. To keep a low profile: Aw, shucks, it weren't nuthin'. That big ol' bird practically flew itself. The Right Stuff.

Asked about Armstrong, Aldrin shies from the question. There's a long ache there, held in check by loyalty and discretion. It's well known that Aldrin badly wanted to take that first step on the moon. There was even a precedent for it. On the Gemini and Apollo missions, he reminds me, the second-in-command always performed the EVA, or "extra-vehicular activity." Apollo 11 would be the exception: NASA (very wisely) decided that the first footfall on another world should be made by a civilian, rather than an Air Force colonel.

But the issue cuts much deeper. It concerns the mantle of heroism. Aldrin, stumping around the globe in support of space travel, is sick of being asked how it feels to be the "second man on the moon." The question is especially galling since Armstrong, NASA's banner boy, isn't compelled to run around promoting space exploration. Neil's an airplane buff, not a rocket man. He doesn't share the sense of debt, or the evangelical spirit, that drives Aldrin.

But Aldrin's frequent cameos (he's appeared on everything from Letterman to "The Simpsons") can be taken as grandstanding, an impression not diminished when he takes the stage in a packed auditorium, holds aloft a "Toy Story" action figure, and declares, "I am Buzz Lightyear!"

The joke, as ever, has a ring of truth. Like Lightyear -- an all-American superhero who discovers he can't really fly -- Aldrin is a complex character, a man who has known the heights and depths at their most extreme. A West Point alumnus and Air Force fighter pilot, he shot down two MiGs in dogfights over Korea. When the war ended he enrolled at MIT, where he earned a Ph.D. in orbital rendezvous theory. Aldrin joined the astronaut corps in 1963, and in 1966 performed the longest spacewalk of the Gemini program: five-and-a-half hours dangling outside the capsule. Three years later, he and civilian test pilot Neil Armstrong were handed the Holy Grail of the space program: Apollo 11. Aldrin was 39 years old.

One of Aldrin's most vivid recollections of the events of 1969 comes not from the surface of the moon, but from the U.S.S. Hornet, the ship that recovered the Apollo 11 command module at sea. Placed in a quarantine trailer, the astronauts were asked if they wanted to watch the TV coverage of their mission.

"And as we watched," Aldrin says quietly, "I remember turning to Neil and saying: 'Look: We missed the whole thing.'

"Why? Because we didn't see it on television. We didn't share in the electrifying moment leading to touchdown. Hell, we were right there. We did it! But that's not the important thing. We missed the reaction, the emotion embodied by the sight of Walter Cronkite wiping away his tears. That sense of participation, shared by millions of people around the world -- people who had their lives affected, touched, changed."

"Why do I think their lives were affected? Because they want me to know where they were when we landed on the moon. When they see me, they get reminded -- and they remember exactly where they were that moment. They know exactly what they were doing. It's crystal-clear in their minds."

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