It’s like the old Nike-Bo Jackson ad: Buzz knows quarantines.
As the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin was subject to a few back before we knew our most prominent satellite was a cold, dead world and not filled with microbes that would attach themselves to the boots of moon-walkers and hitch a ride back to earth.
As such, he knows how all of us feel right now — and he’s also going through it as well. Aldrin is 90, which obviously puts him in a high-risk category.
So, how’s he coping with the situation? How is he social distancing?
“Lying on my a– and locking the door,” he told Ars Technica.
That’s certainly one way to do it.
The answer came about when Ars Technica’s Eric Berger spoke to Aldrin on Tuesday and asked him for his advice about what we’re all going through at the moment with COVID-19.
“After the Apollo 11 Command Module landed in the Pacific Ocean, the three lunar astronauts were ushered from their life raft onto the USS Hornet aircraft carrier,” Berger wrote.
“Once aboard the ship, they immediately went into a converted Airstream trailer known as the mobile quarantine facility. This trailer was flown by a C-141 aircraft to Houston, where the crew subsequently spent about three weeks inside a ‘secure’ building known as the Lunar Receiving Laboratory.”
What was the quarantine experience like?
“Well, Mike Collins and I used to exercise and jog a little bit around the hallway,” Aldrin said.
“We looked at this one crack in the floor, and there were ants crawling in and out.”
As you can probably guess, microbes are smaller than ants and, if evil moon microbes existed, this would be a pretty good time for them to make their way out.
There weren’t, of course, and the most dangerous living things inside that Airstream were probably some very ornery astronauts.
So, how did Aldrin pass the time aside from jogging in the hallway of an Airstream?
Well, he filled out some paperwork — including a government travel voucher entitling him to $33.31 for his trip back and forth to the moon, courtesy of the federal government.
Hey, say what you will, but $33.31 in 1969 is worth roughly $235 in today’s coin. That’s Nintendo Switch money right there.
What should we take from Aldrin’s response to the coronavirus, aside from the fact that you should always get every dollar you can from the federal government?
First, if you’re old, you need to quarantine. Lay on your posterior. Do whatever you need to in order to not get infected.
It’s not just a matter of not taking resources, it’s a matter of staying alive.
Beyond that, relax a bit. Have a sense of humor.
We’ll get through this. Worse things have happened.
Americans have been known, throughout our history, for our humor and positivity. Those are things we can’t lose at a moment like this.
Instead, we have to hold onto both very tight — even if it means lying on our butts.
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