We’ve all heard Buzz’s famous line “to infinity and beyond!”, right?

The phrase never really had any literal meaning until NASA decided to launch Buzz Lightyear into space on May 31st, 2008.

Image from: https://weheartit.com/entry/254069220

The Man Behind Buzz

When John Lasseter was creating Toy Story, he had a couple different ideas with how to go about Buzz’s character. At first he was going to be a very small, red space toy who knew he was a part of a TV show. Some names I’ve seen that Buzz was supposed to be called are Tempest and Lunar Larry. However, they ended up with a complete opposite character when they decided Buzz SHOULDN’T know he’s a part of a TV show to contribute to the identity crisis plotline. They also decided to name him Buzz Lightyear after looking through space related terms to find lightyear, and Buzz comes from astronaut and pilot Buzz Aldrin, who landed on the moon in 1969.

NASA and Disney Collaborated

In an attempt to make kids excited about science, NASA teamed up with Disney to create educational videos that were fun for kids to watch. Both companies along with Lasseter thought it would be a great full circle moment to have Buzz launch into space, for the satisfaction of the adults seeing Buzz’s dreams come true, as well as have the kids see a familiar figure. The Buzz figure they chose to fly was owned by the son of James Wardle who worked closely with this collaboration. They released the videos they filmed in space as a short series in 2010 called Buzz Lightyear Mission Logs.

This is Not Space Station 77

Image from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5TDbrsq5jI

The closest thing we all thought a Buzz action figure could get to space was to ride Space Mountain at Space Station 77 (the ride opened in 1977). However, the 12-inch figure made it to the real international space station in June 2008. He stayed at the international space station for 467 days, just over a year, which actually broke the world record of longest stay in space which was by Valery Polyakov with 437 days (although they don’t really count it because Buzz was, well, plastic). Buzz flew with the STS-128 crew with many astronauts, pilots and engineers behind this experiment.

Homecoming

Buzz returned back to Earth in September 2009, where he was welcomed back with a parade at the Magic Kingdom in Florida along side the inspiration for his character, Buzz Aldrin. Buzz Lightyear now lives in the Smithsonian where he was donated in 2012 for people to see and kids to be excited about.