Buzz Aldrin - Retirement

Retirement

After leaving NASA, Aldrin was assigned as the Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. In March 1972, Aldrin retired from active duty after 21 years of service, and returned to the Air Force in a managerial role, but his career was blighted by personal problems. His autobiographies Return to Earth, published in 1973, and Magnificent Desolation, published in June 2009, both provide accounts of his struggles with clinical depression and alcoholism in the years following his NASA career. His life improved considerably when he recognized and sought treatment for his problems, and with his marriage to Lois Driggs Cannon. Since retiring from NASA, he has continued to promote space exploration, including producing a computer strategy game called Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space (1993). To further promote space exploration, and to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, Aldrin teamed up with Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones, Talib Kweli, and Soulja Boy to create the rap single and video, "Rocket Experience", with proceeds from video and song sales to benefit Aldrin's non-profit foundation, ShareSpace. In 1995, he made a featured appearance in the Charlton Heston, Mickey Rooney, and Deborah Winters film America: A Call to Greatness, directed by Warren Chaney.

He referred to a "Phobos monolith" in a July 22, 2009, interview with C-Span: "We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by the comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that they're going to say 'Who put that there? Who put that there?' The universe put it there. If you choose, God put it there…"

Aldrin has voiced parody versions of himself in two of Matt Groening's animated series: The Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer"- where he accompanies Homer Simpson on a trip into space as part of NASA's plan to improve its public appearance- and the Futurama episode "Cold Warriors".

In 2011 Aldrin appeared as himself in the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon, where he explains to Optimus Prime and the Autobots that the Apollo 11 mission also discovered a Cybertronian ship on the moon whose existence was concealed from the public. In 2012, he made a cameo appearance in Japanese drama film "Space Brothers".

Aldrin also lent his voice talents to the 2012 video game Mass Effect 3, playing a stargazer who appears in the game's final scene.