Dr. Andy Aldrin is the brilliant son of Dr. Buzz Aldrin, President of Moon Express, and for 20 years served as Director of Business Development for ULA and Boeing and worked at RAND and the Institute for Defense Analysis. We had lunch at NewSpace 2014 before his keynote:
“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. … I am metamorphosing into a new life form. This is where it is happening.”
“Coming from ULA I can’t tell you how expensive propulsion is. It would be embarrassing if I did.”
“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 the engineers ran the show, and with 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.”
For sense of scale: 
He concluded with "To Boldly Stay" 
Some cool stuff next door… 
Successful 3D-printed engines from SEDS 
Chillaxing with the Aldrins, Andy and 
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