Legendary Moon walker and NASA spaceman Buzz Aldrin has said the race to establish a permanent Moon base should be the result of international cooperation with the real focus on a manned mission to Mars.
Speaking in a lengthy interview with Popular Mechanics magazine, Aldrin said the next race to be the first to host a manned presence on the Moon should not be a financially damaging "space race" but an international effort combining the resources of China, Europe, India, Japan and Russia.
"By renouncing our goal of being first on the Moon (again), we would call off Space Race II with the Chinese and encourage them to channel their ambitious lunar efforts into the consortium," Aldrin said.
He added that the Mark II mission to the Moon is, in fact, a "damaging" detour from what should be NASA's principal objective -- namely, the preparation for a manned mission to Mars.
"The agency’s current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020 -- a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago," he said. "Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA’s current lunar plan is a detour."
Approaching his 80th birthday, Aldrin was in no mood to hold back on criticism of the American space administration's plan. In its place, Aldrin proposed a radical program he named the "Unified Space Vision," which, controversially, calls for a permanently manned presence on Mars by 2035.
"Here’s my plan, which I call the Unified Space Vision," he told the magazine. "It’s a blueprint that will maintain U.S. leadership in human spaceflight, avoid a counterproductive space race with China to be second back to the moon, and lead to a permanent American-led presence on Mars by 2035 at the latest."
"That date happens to be 66 years after Neil Armstrong and I first landed on the moon -- just as our landing was 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight," Aldrin said.
However, he also added that for this to occur, NASA's space program must "shift its focus."
"But for this dream to happen, NASA needs to dramatically change its ways," he outlined. "Its myopic Vision for Space Exploration will never get us to Mars. Progressive innovation and enlightened international cooperation will. President Obama and Congress need to set NASA right -- and soon."
"It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Mars -- and I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable future -- we must drastically change our focus," he concluded.
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Img: Buzz Aldrin. Credit: insidetwit/flickr
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