From the editor
The Question I Asked Buzz Aldrin
In 1996 I asked the second man on the Moon what part private enterprise would play in space. Thirty years later, the answer is checkable
Seattle, August 7, 1996. Buzz Aldrin was in town for two events in one day, both for Encounter with Tiber, the novel he had written with John Barnes.1 The first was a bookstore signing in the morning. The second was a talk and another signing that evening at the Museum of Flight.
I went to both. I had a letter in my pocket.
The morning
I stood in line at the bookstore with my brother Roy and a copy of the book. When I got to the front I put the letter in front of him and said, “Mr. Aldrin, I've been assured that you'll at least read this before you throw it in the garbage.”
He laughed, and set the letter off to one side.
He signed my copy of the book. I asked if we could get a photograph, he said sure, and he turned toward the camera Roy was holding. We shook hands. That is the picture at the top of this page. I gave him my business card before I stepped away.
Then we left, and I went straight to a one-hour photo place. This was a film camera. I had the roll developed, had the frame blown up to an eight-by-ten, and was back in the car with a print inside the hour.
The evening
That night at the Museum of Flight, Aldrin gave his talk and then opened the floor to questions. I stood up and asked him what he felt the role of private enterprise was going to be in the space program.
He said it was absolutely necessary that private enterprise get involved. Then he gave the other half of the answer, which is the half I have thought about ever since: it was going to be very expensive, and it was going to be very hard for a private company to do it.
Necessary, and very hard. That was the whole answer, and in 1996 both halves were true.
After the talk he was signing again, so I got back in line. When I reached him I had a second book for him to sign, and I had the eight-by-ten. I asked if he would sign that too. He inscribed the book To John Lang, the same as the first one that morning. One of the two went to my father.
The woman working the table next to him looked at the print and then at me. “That was from earlier today,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I like to get things done.”
He looked at it and signed it, across his own shirt and arm, in Sharpie.
Then I said, “Buzz, I want you to remember my name,” and I handed him my business card — the second one that day.
He looked at the card. “Lang,” he said. “Dave Lang? You related to a Dave Lang?”
I told him I had an uncle named Dave Lang, an electrical engineer. I have never known how Buzz Aldrin came to know him, and I never got the chance to ask.
We shook hands again and went on about our business. I never heard from him. The photograph has been on my wall for thirty years.
The letter
I had been working on Star Bound for three years by then. The magazine was not the point; the magazine was the engine. The plan was to fund a private space program off the interest on a subscriber account, never touching the principal, and to use the magazine to build the subscriber base that filled it. I wanted Aldrin to know about it, and I wanted him to write for it. I never asked him for a dollar.
I found the letter itself this month, on a 1995 PowerBook, in a QuarkXPress file. The machine still boots. Quark still opens. Here is what he read, or did not read, after he set it to one side. I have not changed a word.
Turning dreams of the night into the challenge of the day.
Mr. Aldrin,
Thank you for taking time to read this letter. I know you're extremely busy, so I'll keep this short and to the point. I have seen you on TV a number of times, and it is apparent that you believe that the current space program has not been advancing at the rate that it should be, and that private enterprise should take over. I share this feeling with you, and believe that I have a plan that would make it possible to start a private enterprise space program. I'd like to share this with you.
My name is John Lang, and I am in the process of starting Starbound Magazine. The topics covered will include science, space, new technology, but will center around space colonization. The sole purpose of the magazine is to fund an aggressive private enterprise space program.
A magazine can produce astronomical amounts of revenue, and all that is produced by Starbound will go into an account only for a private space program. The major source of revenue for the space program account comes directly from subscription price. The subscription price will be $100, plus the cost of mailing the magazine, per year. When we reach 1 million subscribers, there will be $100 million in the account. One million subscribers might seem like a lot, but it's only 200,000 for five years, and that is possible to reach in less than two years when promoted properly. I say this because Wired Magazine started with $30,000, publishing it bi-monthly, and in less than two years they had 190,000 in circulation.
Working off the interest that is earned from the space program account, Starbound will start with an engineering group. By conservative figures, that means about $10 million a year to do this. Each year our balance grows, as does the amount of interest that we can spend. As we get more money we expand our project and we increase the size of the program. Other sources that will produce funds will be anything associated with the magazine. Ten percent of all profit from advertising sales, and any program that is sponsored by Starbound, will help us reach the goal of $100 million sooner. So we do not necessarily have to have one million subscribers.
Never touching the balance, and operating off the interest, we will set forth and build a better space program than the world has ever seen. We'll ignite the spark of enthusiasm this country last saw during the Apollo projects, when the words “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” were heard throughout the world. Staying focused, we will work aggressively towards the goal of opening up space for the people who want to go.
I hope, Mr. Aldrin, that I have aroused your interest. I have been working towards the goal of starting the magazine for a very long time, and I estimate that I will be going to press in 12 months. I would be honored if you would like to contribute articles and/or information to the magazine. When we do get started, if you know other people that this would be of interest to, please pass along my name and number. We are looking for contributors. If you would like to contact me, my home number is on the back of my business card. Please call anytime, day or night.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
John Lang
Reading it now
I will be the first to say what is wrong with it. The Wired comparison was optimistic. A million subscribers at a hundred dollars a year was a big number in 1996 and it is a big number now. The interest rates I was counting on do not exist anymore. And I did not go to press in twelve months.
But look at what it gets right. Every line of that letter assumes the money for space would come from people who wanted to go, not from Congress. It assumes the program would be built by an engineering group answerable to that account and not to a budget cycle. It assumes the enthusiasm of Apollo could be bought back, if somebody would just sell it.
That was the whole argument in 1996. It got a laugh, and — twelve hours later, off a business card — a question about my uncle.
The thirty-year check
Here is why I am running this now instead of leaving it on the wall.
Aldrin's answer had two halves. Private enterprise was necessary. And it was going to be very expensive and very hard. The second half is the one worth checking, because the second half is the one that changed.
In February of this year NASA reprofiled Artemis III. The first crewed landing moved to Artemis IV, and the third flight became an Earth-orbit test of the landers.2 Both of those landers are private vehicles: SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon. The agency's rocket and capsule carry the crew up. The landing itself, the part that is actually going to the Moon, belongs to two companies.
New Glenn is being rebuilt after its pad was destroyed in May. Starship flew its third-generation vehicle in May and again in July. A Chinese private company landed an orbital-class booster on legs in August, and a Falcon 9 first stage flew for the thirty-seventh time the same week.3 All of that is in this month's Mission Watch, and none of it was done by a government.
Thirty-seven flights on one booster is what happened to “very expensive.” Two companies holding the Moon landing contract is what happened to “very hard.” He was right that it was necessary. He was right that it would be hard. What nobody in that room could have said in 1996 was that the hard part would be solved by making the rockets come back.
It is not a prediction anymore. It is the program.
What I am asking this time
Aldrin turned ninety-six in January. If this page finds its way to him, I would still like an article. The offer stands. The home number has changed.
And to everyone else reading this: the account in that letter does not exist yet. The subscribers who would fill it are the people who want to go. That is the same thing I was selling in 1996. The difference is that now you can point at the rockets.
I like to get things done. Thirty years is longer than I planned. But the print got signed the same day, and the letter is still here, and so am I.
This is one idea among many. There are more to come.
From one explorer to another, we appreciate you reading this far. We are excited about what this endeavor brings, and we would like you along for the rest of it.
Come join us. Because we are Star Bound.
John LangEditor
Ideas in Star Bound are published open — take them, build them better. Our open proposal.
A note on where this comes from. I am not a metallurgist, a spacecraft engineer, or a degreed engineer of any kind. But I am a practical one, with more than forty years in heavy industrial construction: welding, millwright work, hydraulics, mining, and thirty-three years of electrical construction and commissioning on the North Slope of Alaska, in a place that punishes anything built wrong. Much of that time I have worked as a field engineer, which means I am the one standing in front of the equipment when the drawing turns out to be wrong, and the fix has to be made on the spot, with what is on hand, and has to work the first time. Anyone who has done that long enough learns that a lot of engineering gets corrected in the field by people with more experience than the people who drew it. That is the eye I bring to these subjects: not what should work on paper, but what actually gets built, and what breaks. The facts I take from other people are footnoted so you can check them and read further. The ideas built on top of those facts are my own, and I would rather see them knocked down by somebody who knows better than left standing because nobody looked.
Sources
- Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes, Encounter with Tiber (Warner Books, 1996). Wikipedia entry. ↩
- The February 2026 Artemis III reprofile and the June 2026 crew announcement — sourced in full in Mission Watch: September 2026. ↩
- New Glenn, Starship V3, LandSpace's ZhuQue-3, and the Falcon 9 booster record — sourced in full in Mission Watch: September 2026. ↩
What Aldrin said from the stage at the Museum of Flight is given here from my memory of the evening, thirty years on; the wording is as close as I can make it and the substance is exact. The letter is transcribed from the original QuarkXPress file, unchanged. The events of the day are as I remember them, with my brother Roy as the other witness, and the date is from the receipt.
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