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Buzz Aldrin: First Humans On Mars Shouldn’t Come Back

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 03:01 PST, Jul 9, 2014

Buzz Aldrin, the second person to stand on the moon, believes that for the first people to set foot on Mars, the trip should be a one-way ticket.

In a wide ranging Reditt AMA, Aldrin discussed a variety of topics, including his views on future missions to the red planet. Aldrin has previously voiced his support for the goal of establishing a permanent settlement on Mars, as The Inquisitr has noted. Aldrin elaborated on his opinions during the discussion:

I have considered whether a landing on Mars could be done by the private sector. It conflicts with my very strong idea, concept, conviction, that the first human beings to land on Mars should not come back to Earth. They should be the beginning of a build-up of a colony / settlement, I call it a “permanence.” A settlement you can visit once or twice, come back, and then decide you want to settle. Same with a colony. But you want it to be permanent from the get-go, from the very first. I know that many people don’t feel that that should be done. Some people even consider it distinctly a suicide mission. Not me! Not at all. Because we will plan, we will construct from the moon of Mars, over a period of 6-7 years, the landing of different objects at the landing site that will be brought together to form a complete Mars habitat and laboratory, similar to what has been done at the Moon.

If indeed a colony were to be established on Mars, there would certainly be no lack of interest. As The Inquisitr has previously reported, a private initiative named Mars One, which aims to establish a permanent settlement on the red planet, funded by making the process the center of a reality television show, received more than 200,000 applications from people interested in a one-way ticket to Mars.

Though Aldrin supports the idea of a permanent settlement on Mars, it wasn’t the only topic he addressed during the AMA. As Business Insider reports, Aldrin addressed prior reports that he had observed a UFO during the historic Apollo 11 mission that made him the second human being to walk on the moon. “On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us,” Aldrin related. The object, however, was not an alien spacecraft from another world:

“it was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels. Which one? I don’t know. So technically, the definition could be “unidentified.”

Though a Mars colony may still be years away, fans can interact with Buzz Aldrin through his new initiative, #Apollo45.

[Image via The Space Review]

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