Buzz Aldrin is an American icon. He was one of the people to walk on the moon. And he was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force — but not any more.
Now, he’s an honorary general.
Aldrin, a retired Air Force colonel and the second man to walk on the moon, received an honorary promotion to brigadier general during a Friday, May 5, ceremony at the Los Angeles Air Force Base.
Aldrin’s friends and family, as well as Air Force members, gathered in the base’s courtyard in the early afternoon to, in the words of Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, “celebrate a man who flew among the stars by giving him a star of his own.”
Brigadier general is the first of four general ranks — represented by one star.
Band music and an Air Force flyover welcomed Aldrin to Friday’s ceremony, during which he was also made an honorary U.S. Space Force guardian.
Aldrin, 93, was the lunar module pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 spaceflight, during which he and the late Neil Armstrong — the flight’s commander — became the first humans to walk on the moon.
“It has been an epic era,” Aldrin said Friday. “May that continue.”
Aldrin’s first spaceflight was in 1966 aboard the Gemini 12. Before becoming an astronaut, the New Jersey native served as a combat-ready fighter pilot with the Air Force from 1952 to 1959 after graduating from U.S. Military Academy West Point.
With the Air Force, he flew the F-86 Sabre in 66 combat missions, shooting down two MIG-15 jet fighters while assigned to the 16th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron during the Korean War. Aldrin was also an F-100 Super Sabre flight commander with the 22nd Fighter Squadron in Germany during the Cold War.
Aldrin then earned a doctorate of science in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was the first astronaut to have a doctoral degree.
His love for flight and space exploration was nearly inherent.
Aldrin took his first airplane ride at 2 years old, he said Friday, and found himself on pins and…
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