Possibly the most media-savyy astronaut in history just brought his act to your iPhone. Don't worry, Buzz won't be rapping in this one. Instead, the second man on the moon lends his name and image to the Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science and Space Exploration, an educational iPhone app with an overwhelming amount of information space enthusiasts will find engaging.
You start the app with a nice-looking photomontage loader of Buzz, which segues nicely into the main menu in a few seconds. The app is grouped into five sections: SpaceBuzz, News, Interactive, Buzz Life, and More. Navigating between each requires a lot of tapping back and forth, but none too troublesome to ruin the experience. In fact, the app remembers where you exited a category last session, so it puts you back on the same topic every time you enter it again, which is a nice touch.
Most of the action lies in SpaceBuzz, where you can choose from among ten sections, including crowd-pleasers like the Mars exploration, space tourism and space mysteries. Each one runs very deep, so it's like an all-in-one reference for a ton of things that has to do with the industry. Almost every topic gets Buzz's take on it, allowing you to really get a clearer idea of the famed astronaut's overall view on the big picture. This is interspersed with other experts' views (called Roundtable), allowing for a fuller take on almost every subject with different sides given adequate air time. They also include links to specific related Twitter feeds throughout the app, allowing you to further your research on any particular interest.
As for the other categories: News gives you access to various news outlets for space-related information; Interactive bundles together all opinion-based sections of the app (Buzz's Takes, Roundtable, Q&A and more); Buzz Life gives you access to media about the man and his work; and More has all the other stuff that don’t fit elsewhere (Ask Buzz, podcasts, etc).
Overall, the Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science and Space Exploration is literally a book-worthy compilation of space resources that goes beyond the starter data you'll often find in anything that attempts to cover the topic this broadly. For both amateur and expert space enthusiasts, this thing is a veritable treasure trove, priced at a cheap $1.99.
I’m delighted with this app for several reasons.
It includes a lot of Aldrin’s private, personal photos and insider insights collected from over 30 years of close proximity to the space program and its personnel;
Next, it is fat with huge ranges of information and detail about the U.S. space program, going back to the 60′s.
And finally, and perhaps most significant, under its “mysteries” section the app provides over a dozen clear, concise and graphic claims by a score astronauts, many among the first 7, of their UFO sightings. In one case there is a video of one taken from a porthole of Apollo 11. In others Gordon Cooper speaks on camera about several instances of UFO’s sighted during his missions, plus many, many others.
It’s really odd that no one’s talking about this.