"The United States can and must colonize Mars" believes the ... - The Express

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon in July 1969, said Wednesday that the United States should take the lead with the help of the private sector to send men on Mars to establish a permanent colony.

“The United States must continue to be the leader in space transportation lived and I think we can rely on the dynamism of the private sector to develop a system to land on Mars,” said former astronaut 83 years at a conference devoted to the conquest of the red planet to George Washington University in the federal capital.

A permanent human presence by 2030-2040

“We should focus our attention and efforts of NASA to establish a permanent human presence on Mars by the 2030 and 2040 decades,” he said, detailing its proposed spacecraft traveling constantly between Earth March and enjoying the orbital velocity of the two planets.

“I can not think of anything else that this administration (Obama) could do to show the world that the United States remains the flagship of space exploration,” he told Buzz Aldrin, saying that “we are now ready to send humans beyond the moon. ” For him, “you begin to install the Martian colonies is technically feasible and financially even in this time of budgetary constraints.”

Buzz Aldrin explained that NASA can benefit from the expertise gained with the conquest of the Moon and the experiments on the International Space Station (ISS), saying that “most of the research had already been done” to undertake a manned mission to Mars. His vision, he elaborates in a new book entitled “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration,” is in line with the objectives set out by President Barack Obama to send astronauts to the red planet in the mid 2030.

For NASA, the United States is not technically loans

But unlike Buzz Aldrin, the head of NASA, Charles Bolden thinks that the United States is not ready technically. He had said Monday the first day of the conference there was still significant technological gaps to fill. For Buzz Aldrin must especially now mobilize funds for this mission and the political will.

Regarding recent private initiatives to go to Mars, he supported that of the businessman Dennis Tito, the first space tourist in 2001, in its “Inspiration Mars” plans an overview inhabited the planet in 2018 by two astronauts. However, he found the Dutch project “Mars One” to send humans to Mars in 2023 with no possibility of return, as a “good public relations and to raise funds but without much technical basis.”

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