the Russians the same way. We are
talking about leadership in history for
hundreds and thousands of years.
That is what your RocketSTEM should
be communicating.
“There was a father that came
up to me with his eight-year-old son
at a book signing, and he said ‘You
know my son wants to go to Mars.’
Rather than asking the boy the
or may not have to go down both
paths before making a choice for
both cargo and crew.
“I’m encouraging NASA to look at
Steve Squyres (former principal
investigator of the Mars Exploration
Rover’ program) who’s now the
head of NASA Advisory Council, he
it convenient to limit that to 2020 to
2040 because I think we somewhat
understand the limited things that are
being scheduled between now and
2020. Of course one has to include
what will be available in 2020 but I
just don’t have enough graph paper
to go all the way back another six
years.”
Aldrin plan includes spending
the ensuing decade developing a
complete way of launching things
from the U.S. and staging out toward
the Red Planet in stages. Human and
robotic exploration missions could
begin in low Earth orbit, then move
to Moon, or to asteroid distances
beyond the Moon, and eventually
settle on the Martian moons, Phobos
and
Deimos,
where
real-time
exploration of the Martian surface
could be controlled by humans in
orbit or on the surface of the moons.
“I’ve always had the concept in
the back of my mind that we would
occupy maybe both of the moons
of Mars. If you’re in orbit around
Mars at a moon or otherwise, what
that means is you can control two
rovers on opposite sides of Mars.
Mars (with the Spirit and Opportunity
rovers) could’ve been done in one
week if we had a human being in
orbit around Mars giving instructions
directly with less than a second time
delay to the rovers on the surface.
“What I would add to that
understanding is that if we are in
orbit around Mars, and there are very
good reasons to do that, but if we are
not ready to commit to permanence
on the surface, then do not land until
you are committed to permanence.
The purpose of sending humans to the
Mars – along with the judgment, the
perspective, the stories, the impact –
is to increase the settlement colony,
growing the presence of humans to
help each other survive. The most
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I think that realization needs to be
made clear to the American people
that the way some of us see it is that is
the way to depart orbit around Mars.
“My estimation is pretty clear
humans on Mars that they would
outpost on another planet. And
think its going to take to get there, I
said ‘Now when you get to Mars how
long do you want to stay?’ It puzzled
him a little bit, and he looked up at
the ceiling, and then he said ‘Oh,
a couple of days.’ I thought that
was an interesting answer, and an
understandable answer considering
what eight year olds are generally
aware of. It’s very instructive to look
up at the Moon and ask the question,
‘Now where’s the Sun? And which
way is north?’ and watch how kids
deal with that.
“I am quite excited about the
Mars exploration sequence that I
have put forth and I feel that this is a
very opportune time that should be
encouraged by all STEM students.”
Understanding and learning from
the past is necessary toward moving
forward and avoiding making the
same mistakes over and over again.
With that in mind Aldrin is has formed
two organizations he hopes can
is a foundation called USS Enterprise
which stands for United Strategic
Space Enterprise. The foundation will
examine space policies from the very
beginning of the space program all
the way through the present.
“Once we get it up and running,
my son will carry through because it is
The things that are hampering our
space program right now, maybe we
can change that by knowing what
we did right and what we did wrong,
and look to the root cause. If it is our
system of government then we better
think carefully about where it’s taking
us in high technology, high reliability,
human protection ventures.”
The second organization \