What becomes of old 'friends'..

[ka9q]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example. 

When you walk on the moon at age 38, what do you do for an encore with the rest of your life?

I've tried to read Aldrin's books Return to Earth and Magnificent Desolation but I have only made it halfway through each. He's certainly bright and has some amazing stories to tell, but they're also so... well... self indulgent.

Mike Collins' Carrying the Fire, on the other hand, was a real page-turner. His self-deprecating style was a lot easier.

[raven]

It's a nice little piece of circumstantial evidence against the moon hoax. They aren't all reading the same script. They all have their own takes and perspective, their own voice. I have read Lost Moon, the book the Tom Hanks film, Apollo 13, is based on, repeatedly and it is still worth reading every time.
And thank you, gillianren, for what you wrote there. As someone who has struggled with depression repeatedly, I know how hard it can be when you have to fight your own brain like that.

[Zakalwe]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example. 

When you walk on the moon at age 38, what do you do for an encore with the rest of your life?

I've tried to read Aldrin's books Return to Earth and Magnificent Desolation but I have only made it halfway through each. He's certainly bright and has some amazing stories to tell, but they're also so... well... self indulgent.

Mike Collins' Carrying the Fire, on the other hand, was a real page-turner. His self-deprecating style was a lot easier.

Very much this.
I tried so hard to "like" Aldrin, but just can't.

[Glom]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example. 

When you walk on the moon at age 38, what do you do for an encore with the rest of your life?

I've tried to read Aldrin's books Return to Earth and Magnificent Desolation but I have only made it halfway through each. He's certainly bright and has some amazing stories to tell, but they're also so... well... self indulgent.

Mike Collins' Carrying the Fire, on the other hand, was a real page-turner. His self-deprecating style was a lot easier.

Very much this.
I tried so hard to "like" Aldrin, but just can't.

He was also in Transformers 3 which makes him irredeemable.

[Laurel]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example.  Despite an exemplary military career, a stellar academic career, and being the first with Neil Armstrong to set foot on extraterrestrial soil, he still suffered from depression, anxiety, and alcoholism as a result (according to many) of feeling inadequate and unaccomplished.

Aldrin has also mentioned that he has a family history of alcoholism and mental illness. You can be a highly accomplished person, but you can't change risk factors in your family history.

[Laurel]

And thank you, gillianren, for what you wrote there. As someone who has struggled with depression repeatedly, I know how hard it can be when you have to fight your own brain like that.

Social anxiety is kind of like that too. People might say they  enjoy spending time with you, but it's really hard to believe them. "They're just being polite, I'm terrible at human interaction and people would have a better time without me."

[BazBear]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example. 

When you walk on the moon at age 38, what do you do for an encore with the rest of your life?

I've tried to read Aldrin's books Return to Earth and Magnificent Desolation but I have only made it halfway through each. He's certainly bright and has some amazing stories to tell, but they're also so... well... self indulgent.

Mike Collins' Carrying the Fire, on the other hand, was a real page-turner. His self-deprecating style was a lot easier.

Very much this.
I tried so hard to "like" Aldrin, but just can't.

I see where you guys are coming from; but what other Apollo astronaut would have popped Sibrel? Just sayin' 

[raven]

Yeah. The man may be a shameless self promoter, but I don't really hold it against the guy.
He landed on the moon. If I did that, I'd want everyone to know.

Social anxiety is kind of like that too. People might say they  enjoy spending time with you, but it's really hard to believe them. "They're just being polite, I'm terrible at human interaction and people would have a better time without me."

Heh, yeah. That's a horrible feeling.

[Echnaton]

Yeah. The man may be a shameless self promoter, but I don't really hold it against the guy.
He landed on the moon. If I did that, I'd want everyone to know.

Social anxiety is kind of like that too. People might say they  enjoy spending time with you, but it's really hard to believe them. "They're just being polite, I'm terrible at human interaction and people would have a better time without me."

Heh, yeah. That's a horrible feeling.

I've finally gotten to an age where I can mostly ignore that feeling and actually take people as they come without second guessing.

[twik]

Solon was back for a while on Cosmoquest, but was suspended after a few pages.

I must admit, I wish they'd allow Solon a little more leeway, just to see if he will ever drop a hint about *why* he believes scientists are covering up the "fact" that you can't see light in space. Is it, as previous posters have surmised, a building block in a greater, more common theory, like Young Earth Creationism? Or is it simply an idea that he's come up with that he's become enamored with, without any connections to anything else?

Otherwise, I think his threads on this topic are fantastic examples of typical conspiracist arguments, from begging the question, to goal-post moving, to simply ignoring counter-evidence. I think if I were teaching a course on logic, his threads would be a great (bad) example.

[sts60]

He's so intent on dodging the landslides of evidence against his idea that he contradicts himself pretty regularly.  His insistence that the Moon's barely-there ionosphere permits his "conversion" process, for example, means that his original claim (that the Sun can't be seen near the zenith from the ISS' altitude) can't be right, since there's much more ionosphere above the station than above the Moon.  It's the sort of thing that happens when he's running full-tilt looking back at the evidence rather than forward at a coherent argument.   I wish he'd come over here where the moderation isn't so strict.

[ka9q]

Aldrin has also mentioned that he has a family history of alcoholism and mental illness. You can be a highly accomplished person, but you can't change risk factors in your family history.

Lots of families have histories of alcoholism and mental illness. Mine, for example. Doesn't mean you'll necessarily be a mentally ill alcoholic all your life.

I actually don't care much for alcohol; I think I got that from my mother. On the other hand, her father, who died when I was three, reportedly believed the earth was flat and rejected the germ theory of disease and the existence of artificial satellites.  Needless to say I didn't inherit those traits, but I sure wished he'd lived longer so I would have had the chance to argue with him.

[JayUtah]

Part of life is realizing that your heroes may not be as heroic as you wish.  Each astronaut has a distinct personality with desirable and less-desirable traits.  Aldrin, for example, is brilliant, a self-promoter, and uniquely charismatic.  He's also prone to depression and also the guy you hope you don't get stuck talking to at a party.  You'll never be able to explain all a person's behavior in terms of his public persona.

But humanizing the Apollo crews is essential.  They are little different in most respects than the other people in our social and professional circles.  And we learn to accept the whole package among our peers, so why not also the crews?

[Glom]

Highly-accomplished people can still suffer an inferiority complex.  Buzz Aldrin is a good example.  Despite an exemplary military career, a stellar academic career, and being the first with Neil Armstrong to set foot on extraterrestrial soil, he still suffered from depression, anxiety, and alcoholism as a result (according to many) of feeling inadequate and unaccomplished.

Aldrin has also mentioned that he has a family history of alcoholism and mental illness. You can be a highly accomplished person, but you can't change risk factors in your family history.

Still curious that with that background the NASA doctors didn't think twice during the selection process.

Yeah. The man may be a shameless self promoter, but I don't really hold it against the guy.
He landed on the moon. If I did that, I'd want everyone to know.

Social anxiety is kind of like that too. People might say they  enjoy spending time with you, but it's really hard to believe them. "They're just being polite, I'm terrible at human interaction and people would have a better time without me."

Heh, yeah. That's a horrible feeling.

He joined in for a wonderfully self-deprecating joke in TBBT where he was the demonstration to Howard of what being an obnoxious gloat about being in space is like.

[ka9q]

But humanizing the Apollo crews is essential.

Agree, but at the time NASA went out of their way to paint these guys as superhuman. And like anyone with a nationwide (or worldwide) audience, they tend to watch what they say.

These guys finally started to sound like real people when the transcripts of the on-board intercom recordings came out.