Lunar landing: Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin, 79, born in Montclair, N.J. served as lunar module pilot for Apollo 11 for the first manned moon landing. He just published a memoir, "Magnificent Desolation."

Some people thought: ''Space, it's so big a place up there, maybe we ought to send a poet or maybe a philosopher.'' And president Eisenhower said, ''No, we want success. We're going to send test pilots up there,'' because we want them coming back alive.

We put our monkeys up, but they (the Soviets) beat us to the orbital flight with Yuri Gagarin. . . . That's when the president (Kennedy) said that we're going to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely. Pretty good idea, that bringing him back safely.

The decision was made to have a special landing craft that would not be exposed to (the heat of) the launch. . . . The competition was won by the Grumman company on Long Island. And they set about with their expertise to convert from building airplanes to building a spacecraft, and they did it extremely well. It was very lightweight, very serviceable, very specialized. Those were the major reasons that we were able to get to the moon on time when we did.

If you're in orbit, you see the horizon, you see the moon and then you see the Earth coming up. It's a very moving sight. . . . All of that begins to increase the awareness of the grandeur of the universe, and the tremendous distances that are involved, even in our puny little Earth-moon system.