“You may be asking why I am here? Why would […]

“You may be asking why I am here? Why would I leave the industry giants of ULA and Boeing for a new space startup? Well, I want to be on the right side of evolution.”
— Dr. Andy Aldrin, the brilliant son of Dr. Buzz Aldrin, served as Director of Business Development for ULA and Boeing before becoming President of Moon Express. We had lunch at NewSpace 2014 between our keynotes. More gems from Andy:

“In the Apollo program there weren’t lawyers, and that was a big part of its success. It’s the dominance of the engineers over the administrators. In my dissertation on the space race, I argue that the Soviets beat us in the early years because their engineers ran the show, and when they launched Sputnik, the government got the joke.”

“We had a 40% failure rate with Atlas. You’d think the astronauts would have whipped out their slide rules and run the odds. It was crazy that they flew on those rockets.”

“Apollo 11 left a placard that we came in peace for all mankind. The Moon 2.0 plaque will read ‘we came for profit for all our shareholders.’ That is a more sustainable proposition.”

“Coming from ULA I can’t tell you how expensive propulsion is. It would be embarrassing if I did.”