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Buzz Aldrin wouldn't have made it to Salt Lake Comic Con's FanXperience — or back to anywhere else on Earth — had it not been for a felt-tip pen.

As he lay down to sleep on the floor of the lunar module during his Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. noticed a black knob among the lunar dust he and Neil Armstrong had tracked in after a moonwalk. It ended up being the circuit breaker needed to ignite the engine to return home.

After a long night with Mission Control, attempting to figure out what to do, they determined the astronauts needed to insert something into the breaker to activate it. The pen ended up igniting the engine.

"It just goes to show that after years of planning and training, things can go wrong," Aldrin told a nearly sold-out Grand Ballroom at the Salt Palace Convention Center on Thursday afternoon, the launch date for FanX.

The 86-year-old retired astronaut also regaled reporters at a media preview earlier in the day with anecdotes about the Apollo 11 capsule's splashdown, but Aldrin is also looking ahead to the next great space adventure: sending humans to Mars.

"Mars, maybe, once was more supportive of life than Earth," Aldrin mused in the morning session, dressed in an iconic NASA jacket and wearing a shirt proclaiming "Get your ass to Mars." He said it may be possible to terraform the red planet — make it more Earth-like so humans could live there. "We will do more than visit," he said.

Aldrin, an engineer, in 2013 wrote a plan for a viable Mars journey in the book "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration." His idea — for a ship that would orbit Mars and pick up and drop off shuttles to and from the planet's surface — was an inspiration for the Hermes spacecraft created by author Andy Weir in "The Martian" and in the movie adaptation that starred Matt Damon.

FanX runs through Saturday at the Salt Palace. It brings thousands of fans together to talk about their favorite shows, dress in costumes, attend panels, shop at vendor booths, and see and hear celebrities from such shows as "The Walking Dead," "The X-Files," "Doctor Who," "Supernatural," "Underworld."

Salt Lake Comic Con founders Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg gave Aldrin a hero's welcome Thursday morning, presenting him a 5-feet-high portrait, made from Lego bricks, of him as a young astronaut.

Aldrin, who said he grew up on comic books and Buck Rogers, appreciates science fiction as a gateway for people to understand real science. He has written science-fiction books with stories grounded in theoretical science. "We need for young people to see more reality [in science fiction]," he said.

British actor Peter Davison, another celebrity visiting for FanX, said he loves science fiction because "it has such limitless possibilities."

Davison, best known as the fifth actor to play The Doctor on "Doctor Who" (from 1981 to 1984), said, "You can tell virtually any story in a science-fiction format. … The possibilities are endless. I suppose it's a pioneering thing — it's your imagination and it's reality, it's what may be and what is possible."

Aldrin's message to kids growing up on fantasy figures, like the "Toy Story" character Buzz Lightyear, is that "they have to know I'm the real Buzz. … I had to teach that dummy pretty much all he ever knew."

Jokes aside, his underlying theme Thursday was one of embracing adventure and working together to further space exploration.

"Humanity needs to push forward beyond its current limits, just like we did in 1969," Aldrin said Thursday afternoon. "Apollo was people at their very best working together. It all started with a dream that seemed impossible, but it is possible and I'm living proof of that."

Sheena McFarland contributed to this report.

Twitter: @moviecricket —

FanX all weekend

The third FanXperience, or FanX, is presented by Salt Lake Comic Con.

Where • Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center, 100 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City

When • Through Saturday

Tickets • Go to saltlakecomiccon.com for details