- “Mankind does not need to visit Mars or conquer it, but rather to build a permanent settlement there”
- “I have no doubt that I am lucky. My mother was born the year when the Wright brothers made the first flights in history, and my father was a pioneer in the world of aviation. I just flew jets in the Korean War and made spacewalks, and yet – I got to go to the moon.”
These remarks astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin, the man who landed on the moon with Neil Armstrong, made at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. The 86-year-old living legend addressed the summer program of the of the International Space University.
According to i24news Aldrin declared to the crowd as he kicked an imaginary posterior into gear”Get your a** to Mars! Let’s go for it!”
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He said “There’s no greater endeavor that humanity will undertake for generations to come than to create a permanent presence on another planet in the solar system.” and added that nothing else could unite the world as much as a successful human mission to Mars, similar to how his, Neil Armstrong’s, and Michael Collins’ landing on the moon brought the globe together, geektime reports.
Aldrin’s vision has evolved what he calls “Cycling Pathways”, which when completed would include two “cycler” spacecraft which continuously travel back and forth between Earth and Mars.
Aldrin, one of the most famous astronauts in history, was born in January 1930 in New Jersey as Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., is best known as one of the first two astronauts who set foot on the moon. The younger generation is also familiar with him thanks to Buzz Lightyear – the hero of the movie Toy Story – who was named after Aldrin.
The first landing on the moon, featuring Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, took place 47 years ago this month – on July 20, 1969. Armstrong descended from the landing module to the moon, followed by Aldrin, who described the scenery as “magnificent desolation” – as he later called his autobiography. They placed the US flag and a commemorative plaque on the moon, carried out a few predetermined scientific missions and spoke with then US President Richard Nixon. Then they boarded the landing module and returned to Columbia – the command nodule – where their fellow astronaut Michael Collins was waiting for them, orbiting the moon while they were on it.
Dr. Aldrin, a West Point graduate and former fighter pilot, received his Ph.D. from MIT. The subject of his doctoral thesis was manned rendezvous in space. The rendezvous methods that he developed in his thesis and subsequently are still in use today, and have earned him the nickname Dr. Rendezvous. In 1963 he was accepted into the ranks of NASA as an astronaut and became known mainly for his record breaking Gemini 12 spacewalk (1966) and the Apollo 11 moon landing (1969).
Apollo 11 was the peak of the Apollo program, announced by US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) in his famous speech in which he set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, did not live to see his dream realized.
The main mission of the Apollo crew was a manned landing on the moon, and more than half a billion TV viewers followed Armstrong descending the landing module’s ladder and saying: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin descended about twenty minutes later and together they carried out the predetermined tasks, including walking on the moon, collecting soil samples, installing a TV camera to broadcast images from the moon to earth, and placing a plaque bearing a message of peace to any living creatures who finds it. Four days later, on July 24, 1969, Apollo 11 landed in the Pacific Ocean.
“We were given an opportunity to land on the moon, and the opportunity became a landmark event that changed the history of mankind, ” said Dr. Aldrin at his lecture on Tuesday. “Mankind has managed to set foot in a new and completely different place. Four hundred thousand people were involved in the success of this mission and a half billion were watching us making history. When we returned from there we were greeted as heroes, but the world cheered not only us but what we represented: conquering the impossible.”
The Mars mission
Dr. Aldrin has never rested on his laurels, and for the past three decades he has spent most of his time on the next mission: populating Mars. “I’m not talking about a visit to Mars, or about occupation or even about having people coming and going to Mars; I’m talking about a permanent presence. My plan presents a define path to mankind’s next home.”
To this end, he founded the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute in Florida, which is working to promote settlement on Mars, with the target year being 2040. “Mars is the island awaiting us in the darkness of space, so get your ass to Mars. Because there, as President Kennedy said about the moon landing mission, a rendezvous with destiny is awaiting us.
