Blake Hall
It’s a trivial visual that can be made much easier if you know what the first winged badge (at the top) is. Hint, hint. Because the following medals are — a little less rare?
You have the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal with cluster. You have the Legion of Merit. You have the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster. You have the Air Medal with two clusters. You have the Air Force Commendation Medal. You have the Outstanding Unit Award. The Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction and the Korean Service Medal with two stars. The Presidential Unit Citation (from Korea). And that’s just to name a few.
Need another hint? Here it is (another visual too):
The man who made that footprint is the answer to the question. And, no, it’s not Neil Armstrong.
He’s the guy in the helmet below:
See him? Got it or no? Here’s one final hint (and pay no attention to the title in this video, the man is hardly a “reporter”) …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VfAfzNEWOc
Buzz. Aldrin. The man. The war hero from New Jersey, defending himself from someone who never walked on the moon, is jealous, will never walk on the moon, and wasted a lifetime crying about it. Not to mention harassing kind old men — military veterans, too — who fought for his freedom to hold his silly, childish convictions.
Honestly, even if you honestly believed the moon landings were staged (which they weren’t), why would you be so angry about it? What would it be to you? It has no bearing on any of our lives today. Unless, of course, you used the issue to garner attention for yourself, because you were never smart enough or tough enough to be an astronaut.
Anyway. If you want to hear a gold standard, top tier, professional bashing of the annoying conspiracy theorist who earned Aldrin’s big ole meaty fist right in his ill-defined, sock puppet of a face, click here to listen to Bill Burr’s take on it.
It’s priceless. Just keep in mind that there is an excessive amount of swearing in it so, earmuffs.
Oh, and in case you were curious, here’s a snippet of Aldrin’s superhuman military career (via Wikipedia):
Aldrin graduated third in his class at West Point in 1951, with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force and served as a jet fighter pilot during the Korean War. He flew 66 combat missions in F-86 Sabres and shot down two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 aircraft. The June 8, 1953, issue of Life magazine featured gun camera photos taken by Aldrin of one of the Soviet pilots ejecting from his damaged aircraft.
After the war, Aldrin was assigned as an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and next was an aide to the dean of faculty at the United States Air Force Academy, which had recently begun operations in 1955. That same year, he graduated from the Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He flew F-100 Super Sabres as a flight commander at Bitburg Air Base, West Germany, in the 22d Fighter Squadron. In 1963 Aldrin earned a Doctor of Science degree in Astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His graduate thesis was “Line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous”, the dedication of which read, “In the hopes that this work may in some way contribute to their exploration of space, this is dedicated to the crew members of this country’s present and future manned space programs. If only I could join them in their exciting endeavors!”
You have to remember, back in the early 1960s, Kennedy had made NASA and its journey to the moon a top goal. So the members of the team that would be tasked with completing it, the astronauts, were the best of the best. The studs of the studs. Brilliant, bold and fearless. And Aldrin was one of them.
On July 21, 1969, at 03:15:16 (UTC) Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. set foot on the Moon, right behind the mission’s commander, Neil Alden Armstrong, a former USAF pilot and U.S. Navy officer.