An autographed book by pilot and astronaut Buzz Aldrin

An autographed book

Buzz Aldrin is an American aeronautical engineer, former astronaut and pilot. Aldrin performed three spacewalks as a pilot of the Gemini 12 mission in 1966, and as a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. He and mission commander Neil Armstrong became the first people to be on the surface of the moon.

On July 21, 1969 GMT, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the second person to set foot on another celestial body, taking a kilometer-long walk on the surface of the moon. This was his fourth outing into airless space, which he beat his previous world record. "The moon shocked me, because you realize that you are looking at something that has remained unchanged for hundreds and thousands of years. The time frame we find ourselves in front of is so bottomless, but we live in seconds, minutes, and we need to transmit information at the speed of light."

In collaboration with the American science fiction writer John Barnes, in 2000, the astronaut wrote a novel about the opportunities and dangers that a person can face when traveling through outer space. The plot of the novel "The Return" is a mixture of detective, science fiction and social drama. It also includes the idea that the development of space tourism is inevitable and necessary for all mankind.

The book begins with a description of a corporation engaged in sending people on trips to space. However, during one of the flights, something goes wrong, and the shuttle is forced to make an unexpected landing on the ISS. After a confusing series of misfortunes, minute by minute, the International Space Station begins to fall from orbit. And only former astronaut Scott Blackstone and his allies can save the station and the space program itself.

In 1985, Aldrin proposed to NASA the project of "orbital hotels" plying between Earth and Mars. This project is called Cycler, and its main strategic goal is to transport cargo and the first colonists to Mars for commercial purposes — the development of space tourism and the creation of space hotels. The core of the Aldrin group's project is an inexhaustible source of energy — the gravitational forces of cosmic bodies, which, interacting with each other, can "build" the orbit of a space "hotel". The idea is that when a space vehicle enters the zone of action of the gravitational forces of Earth or Mars, it will not stop - its speed will decrease, but landing should not be carried out.