It's been one of the greatest challenges that ever came along in my life; it was one of the more difficult things to do.

I'm convinced that sending people to Mars is so expensive that if you go once and bring the people back and then go again and bring the people back, we're eventually going to run out of money. But what if we send people the first time and they don't come back? What if they stay there?

America's can-do spirit cast a warm glow across nations and cultures, generating more goodwill and support for our country's ideals and causes than had otherwise been possible.

My petite little platinum blonde beauty of a wife suddenly turned into a public-relations dynamo. "The business is Buzz!" she proclaimed, and indeed so it became.

Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.

I want people to go into space, to orbit around the world a few times, even to stay there for 24 hours and then come back to where they took off. And I also want people with a low income to be able to do that, not only rich people.

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?