This week's Question: Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is teaming up with the Florida Institute of Technology to develop a "master plan" to colonize Mars within 25 years. Aldrin envisions using Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos, as preliminary stepping stones for astronauts. The program would culminate with a landing at a Mars base that had been prepared with robots tele-operated by astronauts on Phobos. A spacecraft would travel between Earth and Mars on a continuous basis using “cycling orbits,” with astronauts boarding them from space shuttles and riding across interplanetary space and then leaving the spacecraft behind at the destination. Aldrin hopes that the plan will lead to the first Mars settlement by 2039, the 70th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing. What do you think? Will we colonize Mars by 2039?

 

 

What do you think?


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