NEIL ARMSTRONG: "Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
History was made on July twentieth, nineteen-sixty-nine. That is when Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the moon.
Aldrin is now seventy-nine years old. Six crews of astronauts visited the moon from nineteen sixty-nine to nineteen seventy-two.
BUZZ ALDRIN: "And I think those stories need to be told over and over again."
The American space agency turned to other projects, including the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The space station is a joint effort of sixteen nations. Aldrin says one thing he would like to see in the future is greater international cooperation on space exploration.
He says the United States could help other nations get involved with the space station. He says those nations could consider calls for an international project to return to the moon. But he says America should not use its resources to go there because that was done earlier.
In two thousand three, President George W. Bush announced plans to return astronauts to the moon by the year twenty twenty. He proposed using the moon as a base to go to the planet Mars. Adrin believes the United States should send astronauts to Mars. He says this could be done by twenty thirty-one.
Adrin believes nations can compete in developing space technology. He says they also should work together on space projects involving long flights. He says that goal will require the leadership shown by great explorers and leaders in the past.
BUZZ ALDRIN: "... the historical nature of a world leader that commits to a realistic path of about two dozen years to take creatures from the surface of one planet, like the Earth, and begin to have a growing permanent settlement on another planet in the solar system. Historically that is, in my estimation, greater than Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Magellan, Columbus, Kennedy."
Aldrin wrote about his life in a book, "Magnificent Desolation," and a childrens book, called "Look to the Stars." Im Barbara Klein.
