We were only supposed to go to the moon once; unfortunately, Buzz Aldrin got left behind.1 It was quickly agreed that the Soviets could not be allowed to find out about this. Within the space of just a few hours, the ruse of a “quarantine chamber” was engineered by NASA public relations to allow Glen Foster of Wichita, KS—an Aldrin lookalike2—time to perfect his performance. With the world enamored of the false Aldrin, NASA was free to organize a scientific mission with the secret and audacious aim of rescuing Aldrin: Apollo 12.
Unfortunately, Conrad and Bean also forgot to bring Aldrin back. It would in fact ultimately take six tries to succeed in their mission:
- APOLLO 12: Forgot about Aldrin.
- APOLLO 13: Technical failure prevented moon landing.
- APOLLO 14: “Seemed like he was enjoying himself so we let him be.”
- APOLLO 15: Aldrin forgot the rock again.
- APOLLO 16: Prosopagnosia.
- APOLLO 17: Mission achieved.
Buzz Aldrin finally returned to Earth and his civilian, terrestrial life on December 22nd of 1972,3 having spent two and a half years stranded on the surface of the moon. Aldrin has never commented on how it was that he survived so long in total isolation.4
THEY DIDN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS
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Realizing he had forgotten his favorite moon rock (a chunk of anorthosite resembling the state of New Jersey), Aldrin left the capsule to retrieve it—unaware that Armstrong had begun the Lunar Module’s ascent sequence. Armstrong did not, in fact, notice Aldrin’s absence until his rendezvous with Collins in the Command Module. Armstrong later stated that he assumed “Aldrin was simply keeping quiet and being a good sport about my headache.”
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Bill Safire, one of Nixon’s speechwriters, had anticipated the possibility of space disaster and so compiled a list of lookalikes for each of the three astronauts whom he was confident could be hired with less than a day’s notice. Safire would continue to do this in advance of every NASA mission, even the ones that took place after Nixon left office. “Please stop sending us memos,” wrote NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe in January 2002, “I have long since stopped reading them.”
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Glen Foster, having spent more than two years performing the part of America’s favorite moon-man, had trouble adjusting back to his own civilian life. Aldrin, taking pity on Foster, convinced his friend Stanley Kubrick to recreate the moon landing on a sound stage with Foster as his star, stating with a cryptic quirk of his eyebrows: “The true moon for the true Aldrin, and the false moon for the false Aldrin. And who is not the false Aldrin?” Foster remains on that soundstage to this day.
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No matter how many times Safire asked him.
You shouldn’t chost right before falling asleep b/c if you do you might forget that the state abbreviation for Kansas is not, in fact, KA