{"id":18459,"date":"2018-06-26T23:05:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/buzz-aldrin-shares-latest-space-vision-even-as-questions-swirl-about-his-state-of-mind\/"},"modified":"2018-06-26T23:05:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:05:27","slug":"buzz-aldrin-shares-latest-space-vision-even-as-questions-swirl-about-his-state-of-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/buzz-aldrin-shares-latest-space-vision-even-as-questions-swirl-about-his-state-of-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Buzz Aldrin shares latest space vision even as questions swirl about his state of mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_430197\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-430197\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-430197\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180626-buzz-630x630.jpg\" alt=\"Buzz Aldrin\" width=\"630\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180626-buzz-630x630.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180626-buzz-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180626-buzz-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/180626-buzz.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-430197\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin acknowledges that the change in tone on his Twitter account has \u201cunfortunately resulted in an exchange or two.\u201d (Buzz Aldrin via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Buzz Aldrin wants people to know that he has some cool new ideas about how to get to the moon \u2014 not just because they\u2019re cool, but also because they show his mind is working.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s not an inactive, incapacitated, dependent mind,\u201d the 88-year-old Aldrin, who became one of the first humans to walk on the moon during 1969\u2019s Apollo 11 mission, told me today during a wide-ranging telephone interview.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s an issue nowadays, due to a legal fight that\u2019s pitting Aldrin and his new business managers against two of his children and his former business manager.<\/p>\n<p>The children, Andrew and Janice Aldrin, have asked a court to determine the former astronaut\u2019s competency, with the aim of taking more control of his accounts as co-guardians.<\/p>\n<p>In response, Buzz Aldrin filed a lawsuit alleging that his children and his former manager, Christina Korp, have been improperly characterizing his mental state, exerting too much control over his personal life, and misusing his money.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the younger Aldrins countered with a statement saying that the allegations in the lawsuit \u201care products of the increased confusion and memory loss that Dad has demonstrated in recent years.\u201d Korp, meanwhile, issued her own statement saying she was being \u201cunfairly defamed\u201d by Buzz Aldrin\u2019s managers and lawyers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin speaks out after suing own children\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JG22hpsQiLo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The family feud is sure to get even more tangled: This week, Aldrin will reportedly undergo examinations by court-appointed mental health experts.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s not what Aldrin wanted to talk about when he called me up today. He wanted to talk about building space gateways to the moon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI crystallized this thinking while I was getting a massage this morning,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n<p>Aldrin\u2019s plan, which has been percolating for much longer than the time it takes to get a massage, builds on NASA\u2019s Gateway concept. The concept calls for building up a platform in the vicinity of the moon, to serve as an initial in-space facility for managing lunar operations.<\/p>\n<p>Aldrin said the Gateway could also house an electrolysis facility for turning water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel&nbsp;\u2014 at least until a water-splitting facility could be built on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGateway is something that everybody is tapped in on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He envisions using other sorts of \u201cgateways\u201d to build out a transportation infrastructure, including two International Space Station labs and a new type of transfer vehicle to ferry payloads and people between Earth orbit and the lunar Gateway.<\/p>\n<p>Another piece of the puzzle would be a type of spacecraft that Aldrin calls a Space View Voyager, which could house people during long-duration stays in space. Aldrin\u2019s term takes its inspiration from World View Enterprises\u2019 balloon-borne Voyager capsule.<\/p>\n<p>Aldrin insisted that China should be included in future space plans, even though \u201cwe gave them the finger on the ISS, and they would love to do that to us in return.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want them to be an integral, equal partner in a coalition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Aldrin\u2019s aware that his plan needs more work. \u201cI can\u2019t do it myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just one person.\u201d So he\u2019s creating a new entity called the Human SpaceFlight Institute to turn his multi-gateway concept into a realistic blueprint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want this to be the first innovation that the Human SpaceFlight Institute \u2026 puts through exercises with the universities,\u201d Aldrin said. He also said he\u2019s soliciting feedback from friends in the space community, and is talking about going on a nationwide tour next month as a \u201cpreamble\u201d to next year\u2019s Apollo 11 golden anniversary.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"icon-quotes-left\"><\/span>&nbsp;The stimulus of constructive thinking has risen in a way that surprises me.<span class=\"icon-quotes-right\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Aldrin said the current legal battle is fueling a personal push to become more active in spheres ranging from social media to the National Space Council\u2019s recently formed Users Advisory Group.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt motivates me to make it clear to people that, not only am I active, but the stimulus of constructive thinking has risen in a way that surprises me, and surprises other people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The change has certainly been jarring to some, including those who noticed a dramatic shift in tone on Aldrin\u2019s Twitter account, @therealbuzz. \u201cRegaining my control of inputs into a Twitter account unfortunately resulted in an exchange or two,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>At one point during our nearly hourlong conversation, he even asked for advice on managing social-media accounts \u2014 for example, by automating the reposting of responses to multiple platforms. \u201cI might want to know a little more about that,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n<p>The phone conversation wandered into other topics as well, including his renewed interest in doing product endorsements (\u201creliable, sensible things for me to be associated with\u201d) and his hopes of discussing his space concepts with space-savvy billionaires such as Jeff Bezos (who won the first-ever Buzz Aldrin Space Innovation Award last year).<\/p>\n<p>We didn\u2019t delve into financial or legal questions, and I didn\u2019t ask Aldrin about his mental state or his interactions with his children and business associates. But he volunteered that he has a habit of saying what\u2019s on his mind, even if what comes out occasionally sounds \u201chumorous and absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m doing is training my brain to think out of the box,\u201d he said. \u201cThat creativity is sure something I don\u2019t want to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin acknowledges that the change in tone on his Twitter account has \u201cunfortunately resulted in an exchange or two.\u201d (Buzz Aldrin via Twitter) Buzz Aldrin wants people to know that he has some cool new ideas about how to get to the moon \u2014 not just because they\u2019re cool, but also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3255,2702,625,4029],"class_list":["post-18459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-buzz-aldrin","tag-deep-space-gateway","tag-moon","tag-space-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}