Comparing and Contrasting Buzz Lightyear
and Buzz Aldrin
by Jerry Woodfill
There is a 24 minute video comparing Buzz Lightyear and Buzz Aldrin for a comparison/contrast paper. The lecture is contained in two YouTube videos. After watching them, the class is instructed to compose a paragraph discussing how they Buzz Lightyear and Buzz Aldrin are alike and differenct. Watch the first YouTube video by clicking here. Watch the second YouTube video by clicking here.
Being second is never easy. Never mind that a thousand lost to your
efforts. You weren’t the first. So it was with the 2nd man on the
Moon, Buzz Aldrin, the runner-up until…along came another Buzz, the Disney Toy
Story astronaut Buzz Lightyear, named, not by accident, after the second man on
the Moon. The other Buzz, Aldrin, is now
as well-known as Neil Armstrong by virtue of Buzz Lightyear’s popularity. Both have eclipsed Armstrong’s fame. They are now number one in the hearts and
minds of “kid-dom” throughout planet Earth and beyond.
For the comparison/contrast assignment, an essay
dealing with the Buzz pair, five brief video clips depict the uniqueness of
each Buzz. The first
is a digital cloning of Buzz Aldrin into Buzz Lightyear. Watch it to note differences in body shapes,
relative size of various astronaut features and functions. The second movie
is a Buzz Lightyear “bogus” training film directed by Buzz Aldrin. Take notes while watching Lightyear’s
training compared to what Aldrin experienced.
A third
video depicts Buzz Lightyear's recent 15 month tour on the International
Space Station. Disney World held a parade for both Buzz Aldrin and Buzz Lightyear
celebrating Lightyear's triumph return. (Click here to watch
the parade.) The fourth video is most
revealing, a handicap spaceman Buzz Lightyear need not deal with while
exploring the Moon, the planets, and, perhaps, the stars. The brief program deals with the technical
facets of NASA’s waste management facilities.
After watching the first three videos, study the pictures of Aldrin and Lightyear to
find likenesses and differences between the spacemen. Note the spacesuit trousers. (See the sketch
below of the “lower torso assembly – NASA’s name for pants.) Lightyear’s pants look like Willy Wonka’s
togs – fine for Wonka and Lightyear if Wonka remains earthbound and Lightyear
is a Moon-man. Unfortunately, such would
be fatal for the Moon-walker Aldrin.
There is no air on the Moon. The
suit has to be sealed tightly from the vacuum of space. Such pants would spoil an astronaut’s
day!
Now Lightyear’s has another design flaw.
He’s supposed to be an astronaut, not an aeronaut. Tell me what good are his wings without an atmosphere. There’s no air in space or on the Moon. If Aldrin wanted to sail around his
Apollo spacecraft on what NASA calls an EVA
(Extra-Vehicular-Activity), he’d use some kind of “jet-pack.” Newton’s laws set forth the principle of
“action-reaction.” Without jets, there’s
no action, so Lightyear simply stays in place for eternity. Even Disney’s movie “The Rocketier” mounted a
jet on the hero’s back for propulsion. Now if Lightyear were to leap off
Aldrin’s Eagle’s lander porch
expecting his “wings” to make a soft landing on lunar firmament, he’d drop like
the hammer in the attached Apollo 15 video. (The fifth
video clip) He would fall like the
feather falls on the Moon, just as fast as the hammer, demonstrating there is no lunar atmosphere.
There is one way that Buzz Lightyear is similar to Buzz Aldrin. Both are courageous pugilistic
fighters when unjustly confronted. Watch the composite video of their respective
fighting techniques.
An added help for comparing Lightyear and Aldrin is
the sketch below of Aldrin’s spacesuit.
The above picture is altogether revealing for
comparing and contrasting Buzz Lightyear and Buzz Aldrin. Obviously, Lightyear
needs no food/water dispenser or urination/defecation tube or B.M. flap. But what about Aldrin’s and Lightyear’s
limbs, i.e., legs and arms? Both beings
are said to be articulated which means they consist of segments held
together by joints. For Buzz Aldrin, the segments are body bones. While
Buzz Lightyear's segments are plastic parts similar to human legs, arms,
hands, etc.
In order to more fully understand how the segments and joints work
for each Buzz, a brief lesson in robotics is useful.
There are three terms essential to astronautic and aeronautic work. They are pitch, roll, and yaw. Bending your neck forward and backward pitches
your head while moving your scull toward either shoulder is a yaw
maneuver. Roll is simply rotating your
head to the right or left. With this in mind, examine Aldrin and Buzz Lightyear’s
joints. It’s the joints which allow what
NASA calls “Degrees of Freedom.” The
acronym is “DOF” short for “Degree of Freedom.” So your shoulder joint has a
structure allowing: (Watch this! The
narrator moves shoulder to demonstrate the three degrees of freedom.) (1) pitch, (2) roll, and (3) yaw or three
degrees of freedom. What is the DOF for
Buzz Lightyear’s shoulder? Let’s try
Lightyear’s left shoulder. Unlike
Aldrin, Buzz Lightyear has only a
Two-DOF shoulder. In fact, our
astronauts have shoulders which differ DOF-wise. Nevertheless, Buzz Lightyear exhibits certain
un-human movements. Can you do
this? (Rotate Buzz Lightyear about his
waist 360 degrees.) If you can, you’re a
candidate for: 1)
“Ripley’s Believe
it or Not” 2)
“The Guinness
Book” 3)
A Hollywood
horror film 4)
A carnival side
show attraction But Aldrin’s 3-DOF shoulders are essential in ways
Lightyear’s are not. Lightyear’s left
shoulder configuration DOF-wise does permit him to scratch his “behind” with
only his left hand. Watch! Considering that his right arm and hand
conceals a bionic fiery laser, an inadvertent firing during a “rear-end”
scratching would be worst than any fleeing felon receiving a Taser shot to the
buttocks. Likewise any post B.M.
clean-up with the right hand would be perilous, except that Lightyear, unlike Aldrin, has no digestive
system. Having worked 44 years in the space program for
NASA, I’ve got added problems with Buzz
Lightyear’s suit design as an extraterrestrial astronaut garment. His helmet is not a good one for Aldrin’s
use. Should Aldrin flip open the visor
in this fashion: (Demonstrate) UGH! His
last meal would “blow-lunch” from anus and bowels up through the esophagus,
traversing the entire alimentary canal, expectorating into the lunar vacuum
along with an evacuation of his lungs more powerful than any miracle Oreck
“soot-sucker” vacuum cleaner “as seen on TV.”
But “aha” Lightyear would be fine with an open visor. He has no lungs, stomach, bowels or anal orifice. Aldrin’s suit has a device worn on the back named “the
life support system.” It’s simply an
air-pack like a SCUBA diver’s oxygen tank.
Lightyear has a pack on his back too, but not for maintaining life. Buzz Lightyear was never alive. He’s like a NASA robot. His backpack contains deployable wings. But this is an advantage over Buzz Aldrin. Because he’s not alive, he doesn’t get
“space-sickness’, a nauseating debilitating condition akin to “car-sickness”
and “sea-sickness,” nor is he subject to
colds or the flu which plagued the Apollo 7 astronauts and Astronaut Fred Haise
in the movie “Apollo 13.” Likewise, he
doesn’t face injury. Any of his body
parts could be amputated, an arm, leg, even his head, and he’ll still
function. This is a major difference
between Buzz Lightyear and Buzz Aldrin.
When astronauts are weightless in space, they float requiring no legs
for walking. But walking on the Moon is a
different story. Although easier than walking
on Earth with the Moon’s gravity one-sixth Earth’s, legs are required. Now another indelicate issue arises. Lightyear’s got some kind of tight-fitting,
bull fighter’s toreador’s tights for togs.
Actually, his torso seems to be wearing some kind of plastic-molded-diaper
with a green elastic stretch band to keep the diaper from falling to the lunar
surface. It looks a bit disgusting as
far as astronaut-ware. No respectable
spaceman would be seen in such attire.
These male-ballet-britches would be painfully confining for an
astronaut. The males in the class will
agree comparing Lightyear’s briefs with Aldrin’s long-john-like boxers worn under
the lower torso pants. Lightyear has
the body of a carnival “contortionist.”
Watch this: (Bend Buzz Lightyear’s
members into unnatural orientations.)
The most agile astronaut would certainly incur a painful rupture of
muscles. Having dealt with tight-togs, we must consider reading/writing
proficiency issues. Listen to Lightyear’s
limited vocabulary and sentence structure.
(Press Lightyear’s red audio
button to play: “Buzz Lightyear to the
rescue audio.”) He is definitely needs reading instruction
from a grammatical point of view. “Buzz
Lightyear to the rescue.” This is a
sentence fragment lacking a verb. Buzz
Lightyear gets an “F”. Aldrin has
written a dozen books. His most recent
is “Magnificent Desolation.” Neither word is in Lightyear’s limited dictionary
of less than fifty words. Lightyear speaks but four sentences; two of which are
fragments. Yet, there is a more basic flaw exhibited by Buzz
Lightyear with regard to communicating on the lunar surface. It’s an error often made in space
movies. Sound requires a transmitting
medium, i.e., air, water, even a vibrating piece of solid material. A vacuum, whether in space or on the Moon,
just doesn’t “cut it.” Lightyear needs a
radio communicator like Aldrin used on Apollo 11 to talk to mission
control. Yes, Buzz Lightyear is no more
a lunar astronaut than I’m a trapeze artist.
At best, he’s a skydiver, if he had a parachute. Why, a parachute? The answer is
because those short blunt wings provide insufficient lift to keep him
aloft? He’d sink like a corpse thrown
into Galveston Bay with a fifty pound cinder block tied to its ankles.
Considering all Aldrin’s advantages might engender
sympathy for Buzz Lightyear. But there
is an event in the history of human space exploration that instills pride in
Buzz Lightyear and his kind, the dummynauts or manikins of space
exploration. Buzz Lightyear has a
patriarch who was first in space. Before
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and Astronaut John Glenn, there was the Soviet
Dummynaut, Ivan Ivanovich, the space manikin.
Ivan was a forerunner of Buzz Lightyear.
Like Lightyear, he had no lungs, bowels, or life functions. And like Lightyear, he had limbs and a
torso. In May of 1961 just weeks before
Yuri Gagarin’s launch into Earth orbit,
Ivan Ivanovich became the first to orbit Earth in a Vostok capsule. Ivan
proved that a living human could
be ejected and survive a parachute descent to Earth using the Soviet parachute ejection
system. For that reason, Buzz Lightyear
stands proudly with his famous Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Ivan Ivanovich, the first dummynaut manikin
in space. Eat your heart out Buzz
Aldrin! Neither you nor Armstrong were
first in space. It was a member of Buzz
Lightyear’s family, Ivan Ivanovich. The Proud Dummynauts, Manikins in Space: Ivan Ivanovich and Buzz
Lightyear Note: Helmet, Arm Orientation, Glove, Pants and Boot Similarities I hope you’ve taken notes because comparing and
contrasting Buzz Aldrin with Buzz Lightyear is an advanced study in aeronautics
and astronautics. Our Toy Story actor bids you well, “Buzz
Lightyear to Infinity.” (Play
Lightyear’s audio.) And on behalf of Buzz Aldrin, I say to you, as
Astronaut Scott Carpenter wished
John Glenn well, “Godspeed.”
Comparing and Contrasting Buzz Lightyear
and Buzz Aldrin Vocabulary Word List 1.
Torso: The human body excluding the head and limbs;
trunk 2.
Aeronaut: A pilot or navigator of an air craft 3.
Extra-Vehicular-Activity (EVA) : Activity or
maneuvers performed by an astronaut outside a spacecraft in space 4.
Bionic: Comprising or made up of enhanced artificial body parts 5.
Extraterrestrial:
Originating, located, or occurring outside Earth or its atmosphere 6.
Expectorating:
Act of bringing up and spitting out through the mouth 7.
Deployable: Able
to come into a position ready for use 8.
Indelicate:
Improper, coarse, tasteless, vulgar 9.
Contortionist:
A circus performer who displays his (her) muscles and
joints in an unusual or unnatural way 10. Grammatical: Referring
to the logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences,
phrases, and words in any given natural language 11. Engender: Cause or call forth 12. Manikin: A life-sized doll, often
with moving joints, used by artists, tailors, dressmakers 13. Patriarch: A man who is the founder or
oldest member of a group 14. Infinity: Boundless, without end 15. Godspeed: Wishing one a successful
journey 16. Articulated: Consisting of segments held together by joints 17. Manikin: (also spelled mannequin) An anatomical model of the human body for use in teaching, display, or as a human substitute in testing 18. Pugilistic: Of or relating to fist fighting or boxing as a pugilist (boxer)
