--- title: Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars description: On the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, the U.S. should decide on the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement there. canonical: https://time.com/2987573/buzz-aldrin-man-mars-mission/ author: Buzz Aldrin article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-15T16:05:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:33.460Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars og:description: On the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, the U.S. should decide on the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement there. og:url: https://time.com/2987573/buzz-aldrin-man-mars-mission/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdaa7c27591d511a3/69869bca169ab05a7227a5b0/486095747.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: George Washington University Space Policy Institute Holds Humans To Mars Summit og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars twitter:description: On the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, the U.S. should decide on the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement there. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdaa7c27591d511a3/69869bca169ab05a7227a5b0/486095747.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars > Sponsored content. 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Win McNamee—Getty Images  by [Buzz Aldrin](https://time.com/author/buzz-aldrin/)  ## Buzz Aldrin Jul 15, 2014 4:05 PM UTC It’s hard to believe that on July 20, 2014, we’ll be celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11, man’s first landing on the moon. It’s also hard to believe that no one can really say where the U.S. manned space exploration program is heading and how we’re going to get there. People come up to me and say, “It’s too bad the space program got canceled.” This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened. Yes, we hear from NASA that the destination is Mars — and yet there is no detailed plan on how to get there. No one can seem to agree on a clear path. The nation is understandably focused on many other pressing challenges at the moment. However, if we don’t make some important decisions about the future of our space program very soon, I’m afraid the program will be lost to the ages. There are eight U.S. astronauts left out of the 12 who walked on the moon. All of us are in the eighth decade of our lives. Each of us can attest to the importance of continuing human exploration of space and the tremendous impact it has had on so many facets of our society. The technical innovations, scientific achievements, medical breakthroughs, environmental enhancements, national defense improvements and educational impacts have been immeasurable. Our nation simply cannot afford to lose a program that has contributed so much for so long. Our leaders have some important decisions to make and they need to make them now. The moon must not be the last stop in America’s quest for knowledge of other planets and of other places. Here’s what we as a nation must decide: 1. Does the United States wish to continue leading human exploration of space or leave it to Russia, China, India or some other nation to take over? To me, the answer is obvious. 2. Does it not make good sense for the U.S. to take the high ground by establishing cooperative U.S.-China relations in space? We did it with the Soviet Union through the Apollo-Soyuz program back in July 1975, and I believe it is even more important to do it with the PRC in 2014\. Cooperation, not confrontation, should be the hallmark of our dealings with the Chinese beyond Earth. 3. Does it make sense for the U.S. to expend hundreds of billions of dollars to mount a new Apollo-style program to return to the moon? Or have we blazed that trail? Shouldn’t we help other nations achieve this goal with their own resources but with our help? Rather than doing again something we did 45 years ago, shouldn’t the U.S. be developing a path toward Mars? 4. And shouldn’t the U.S. develop the technological capabilities needed to land humans on Mars by first traveling to a nearby asteroid for research and development purposes? A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight. This is imperative, as we’ve never done manned missions beyond the moon. 5. And speaking of Mars, are we prepared as a nation to take the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement on that planet? To me, the answer should be a resounding “yes.” It’s unlikely that the remaining Apollo astronauts, including yours truly, will be around to witness the conclusion of the next exciting chapter in our nation’s space program. However, we would like to be here when our President and Congress make these critical decisions. If our leaders make the right decisions — and they must — we’re confident the new manned space program will meet or exceed the tremendous success of the Apollo program so many years ago. But let’s make these decisions now. [_Dr. Buzz Aldrin_](www.buzzaldrin.com) _served as lunar module pilot for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. He is the author of eight books, including his New York_ Times _best-selling autobiography_ Magnificent Desolation_. His newest book,_ Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration_, was published in 2013\. As one of the leading space exploration advocates, Buzz continues to chart a course for future space travel._ ## Transcript We're at the Time studios in Midtown Manhattan, and right about now, the International Space Station is 230 miles overhead, passing by at 17, 500 miles per hour. In a moment, we'll be chatting live with three of the station six crew members, Commander Steve Swanson, and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman of NASA as well as Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency. Well thank you for being with us today, and I wanted to just jump right in and ask you what time did you guys punch in for work this morning and what does the day ahead look like? We started about 7: 30 this morning, and the rest of the day is various things. You have science. Science. I have some repairs to do. What do you have today Alex? I have several little science experiments already today. And I think for the rest of the day, we have a training event for the new cargo vehicle we expect, orbital, that's coming in the next two weeks, so we're actually gonna use the station manipulator to do some practice grapple with it. And then, in the evening, I think I have a little bit more science experience. So it's a, quite various varied day. It's, it's pretty nice. So it's about a 12 hour day? Yeah, when you include the working out we have to do, it's about a 12 hour day. And Reid, this one's for you. You've been a big presence on Twitter and social media, something the astronauts of the Apollo era never had to think about. So how do, how do you see the astronaut's job changing over the decades? Well, I think the astronauts have always wanted to share their journey with as many people as possible, and I think Apollo with the tools they had they did a phenomenal job. We're just looking to live in this day where, you know, I take a photograph with a with a camera and we just come back and we can email it straight into our Twitter feed and it just does, it makes it so much easier to share this experience. And so, it's almost just become a little collateral duty of ours. So you don't even think about it through the day. It's so easy but it's appreciated, and we really enjoy doing it. And you're keeping in touch with the world that way, but how do you keep in touch with your families? You're gone for a long time. Yeah. We're gone for about five and a half to six months. And NASA does a great job of helping us keep in touch with our families. So, once a week we actually get to do a fairly short video conference. So, I've been talking to my wife and kids. I even had one with my mom and dad. So, that's really been fantastic and that kind of support is really special for us up here and really, really increases the moral on the weekends. And are you able to email back and forth, or is that just not available? No we had the chance of emailing pretty much the whole day. Once in a whole if we have two minutes between two experiments, we can go to our computer stations and then just send an email and receive. So actually I feel more in touch with my family right now than I did during most of the training because my family lives in Europe and the, the time distance from Houston is actually quite uncomfortable to have a telephone conversation because it's either early in the morning for one party. So up here for me it's easier. That's sort of remarkable I think. This one's for Alex. Congratulations on yesterday's World Cup score. And how well have you been able to follow Germany's deep run to the final round? We, we were actually pretty lucky that most of the games happen during the evening hours that we had here so after our work was done we got some live feed actually from mission control in Houston. So, that's never guaranteed and it only works when we have some bandwidth left, but we were pretty lucky. So, most of the games of the US and Germany, we, we saw live and that, that was, of course, a, a good treat for us. And there were a lot of wows yesterday as you'd imagine. [ LAUGH ]. I would imagine, down on Earth too. And speaking of the World Cup, Steve, it was mostly fun and games when Germany beat the US in the first round, but the recent US Russian friction over Ukraine is a far more serious matter. And the other three members of your crew are Russian cosmonauts. Does that kind of thing ever present a problem in the close quarters of a space station? No it does not. We've become good friends with our Russian colleagues. We've trained with them for a long time. We've been up here with them for a long time and that kind of issues don't arise for us. It doesn't cause any kind of friction. And I imagine the fact that you look out the window and you see no borders visible from space makes it gives you a whole different perspective on things. Yes, it does. As I've sorted out. We also watched the Russia or the soccer games together. So that kind of bonds us together, too. Absolutely. We've got a handful of questions from some of our readers. This one comes from a young reader named Luke who wants to know, what do you miss most from Earth? Again, you're up there for a long time. It's the simple things that I think you miss most. For me personally I miss a shower, a nice warm shower in the morning. If we could get that going up here, wow, that would be something really, really super. But for now that's the number one thing. I did see, I did see on a TV show a couple days ago, a family sat down and had a big pizza with a soda and, man [ LAUGH ] I was, at that point I was missing pizza a little bit more than the than the shower, but overall that's where we are. We actually did get three pizza questions from readers so they were right on the money there. From some of our, our photography fans who read time, what cameras do you use? And are there limitations on what cameras can be used in space? Can you just use an iPhone to take a picture up there? Well, you could take an iPhone, but of course what we see out the window, it's so beautiful that we need something with a little bit more resolution. So we have like professional SLR cameras. Also the lenses, sometimes, like if you wanna, take a picture of a typhoon or a hurricane you need a wide angle lens. So and then if you want to take a picture of your hometown you have this huge 800 millimeter lens and you can actually see houses, individual houses and. It's pretty amazing what you can do. And also, it's amazing to see what the caustic radiation does. Like we really have to use up these cameras. Like they only last for a half a year or a year. And then, the, the pixel damage through caustic radiation is so big that we actually bring up new ones. And I imagine the view of the nighttime sky, or it's always a nighttime sky, of course, is radically different with no atmospheric interference. That is true. The stars do not twinkle up here. They just are pin points. And there're so many of 'em. It's so beautiful. Where do you go for privacy? The station as much habitable space as, I think, a 747 and yet, that's all the space you've got. Do you ever find that you need a place to retreat and get a little time alone? You know, working with these guys, I'd almost say no. It's [ LAUGH ] it's always a good, it's always good fun. But we each actually do have, we each actually have our own little bedroom that's about the size of a telephone booth. So it could fit about you and we have two laptops in there that connect with the outside world. But really it's pretty comfortable and we treat those with the highest level of respect. So, my bedroom is my room and and that's my little place to go if I need some privacy, but to date, I mean it's really just been a sleeping quarters. Most of the time we're out here socializing, inviting our Russian crew members down or heading down to see them in the evenings and really it's, it's a good community living situation. And speaking of sleeping, do you dream differently in space? Is there something about the experience unconsciously knowing where you are that changes the way you experience dreams? Actually, I've been asked that question a lot and I, I, in the first weeks I never remembered my dreams. But I did have one dream that I remembered last week and that was actually with, with Reid launching on a rocket from Canada to fly to [ UNKNOWN ] from where we mounted that rocket onto a [ UNKNOWN ] and then flew to space. That I thought that was a pretty remarkable deed. [ LAUGH ] I'm wondering, another thing I notice at night, is actually that I sometimes, I wake up at night and I don't know where up and down is. Of course there's no up and down, and I believe that in that moment I think I'm head down or some way turned around, but then I switch on the light and I realize that I'm actually completely normal. So that happened to me quite a few times and I actually did hear that happens to, to other people once in awhile as well. And I'm sure there are lots of good days in space. What's the toughest day you've had out there. A day you were just happy to see come to an end and go to bed and forget about? There was a day where Alex took some hair clippers and he stood a little to close to me and our Commander Doctor Steve Lawson. And I gotta say I was happy when that day came to an end. [ LAUGH ] And you've got a few months for your hair to grow back. So that's good. And I guess this will be our final question. I know you don't get a lot of free time, but when you do have it, how much of that do you spend simply enjoying the view of the Earth outside your window? Almost all of it. That's one of our biggest free time events that we do up here. And then of course we, you always want to take a picture and share it. So then we spend the other part trying to process the pictures and get them down to everybody else. Well that's pretty much all that we do with our free time. Well thank you so much for making the time gentlemen. 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