Buzz Aldrin: Put Humans on Mars by 2031

It has been 40 years since Apollo 11's mission to the moon and Buzz Aldrin still believes that mission resonates today. That is why we should look at going to Mars in two decades, he pronounced.

Buzz Aldrin, part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, was one of the first humans to step on the moon. Now, Aldrin wants NASA to go deeper and put humans on Mars in the year 2031. “While the international explorers, with our help, are going to the moon, we can develop the long-duration life support systems for other things. Flying by a comet, visiting an asteroid and station-keeping with it,” the former astronaut said. However, NASA may not have the budget to conduct such a heavy and serious mission. At the present time, NASA is replacing three aging space shuttles with Orion capsules so they can carry out a mission to, once again, go to the moon in 2020. Buzz believes transitioning from the space shuttle to Orion is a step backwards. Aldrin envisions sending astronauts to visit the Apophis asteroid, which will just miss Earth in 2029 and have a very close impact on April 13, 2036. He also sees a temporary manned base on the Mars moon Phobos, “By that time, we'd be ready to put people in a gradual permanence on Mars by 2031. That, in a nutshell, is what I really think we should be doing.” He thinks the U.S. should take the lead in the future of spaceflight and maintain global space leadership. “What happens to U.S. space global leadership if everything is going to be done on the cheap and we're not going to think ahead, and we're going back to the moon for some reason that really won't justify the cost of human habitation.” Buzz Aldrin went on to further discuss his relationship with Earth’s protector; the Moon. He sees it as more of a friend than anything else and vividly remembers his one small step for man giant leap for mankind, “No life, no motion, no air. And just the same uniform color of all the dust that reflected light differently depending on the angle of the sun and your view. It just wasn't a very welcome place at all.”