Buzz Aldrin Is Not All That Impressed With Walking on the Moon

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/06/buzz-aldrin-is-not-all-that-impressed-with-walking-on-the-moon.html

by jackfoxy • 16 years ago

65 33 16 years ago

vanityfair.com

mkramlich3• 16 years ago

Hopefully today's generation learns who the Toy Story character was inspired by:

Buzz Aldrin: To Mars and Beyond!

breadbox• 16 years ago

I'm not all that bothered about establishing a presence outside of Earth, myself. That said, I love Buzz Aldrin.

iron_ball• 16 years ago

First visible comment: "I would love to see it to bad Obama, gutted our awesome space program to give illegal aliens free health care."

Can we just burn down the internet yet?

pyre• 16 years ago

We could always create HNOL (HackerNews On-Line) complete with our own walled-garden. A gated community.

jodrellblank2• 16 years ago

Tranlsation: "We're better than them"

Conclusion: polarizing, divisive, conversation discouraging pot-stirring. Downvoted.

dRother• 16 years ago

Why say 'better'? That's a value judgement.

Better informed and more logical is good enough for me, and somewhat hard to dispute.

dennisgorelik2• 16 years ago

Human colony on Mars? No returns? Does he know what average Mars temperature is? Hint: Winter in Antarctica is a hot resort in comparison with Mars.

gaius4• 16 years ago

Probably he's read Dr. Robert Zubrin. Check him out.

nkassis• 16 years ago

It's not like they will be walking around in shorts and t-shirts.

Frankly, I think there is some good reasons for a mars base. It's a shorter distance to the asteroid belt where mining could become a profitable idea.

At the very least, aiming for mars colonization would give us something to strive for and develop technology for. The stuff that came out of the moon program is still incredible today. We need big ideas. Somehow back in the 60s and 70s, big stuff managed to get built. We should return to that style of doing things. In my city, Montreal, they can't even replace a damn interchange built in the 60s which is failing apart. One project, compared to about 5 similar scale projects built back then. Instead we get some odd trash disposal system (read wired this month).

Vivtek2• 16 years ago

It's not so much that it's a shorter <i>distance</i> to the Belt as that the gravity well of Mars is so much shallower than Earth's - making Mars a cheap place to grow food for distribution in the Belt. The surface of Mars is roughly the size of Earth's land area, so there's lots of room for farming. OK, not so many volatiles - but put up some greenhouses and you're good to go.

flogic• 16 years ago

Cold might be a blessing in disguise. Pretty much any off Earth colony is going to require extensive life support. All that machinery will need a place to dump it's excess heat.

grasshoper• 16 years ago

After all these years, he's still trying to make Michael Collins feel better about that whole moon-walking thing.

Jach• 16 years ago

I don't imagine the eventual Mars settlers will want to pretend and be under the control of the (US|Chinese|British|etc) governments, at least once there's a significant number of them. Wouldn't they want to form their own nation there? It'd be interesting to see how a society progresses when it's virtually under no threat of war or foreign hostilities at all... It'd also be a great way to reduce existential risk.

Some political ramblings, feel free to stop reading.. I lost some respect for Obama when he extrapolated numerous things well beyond his possible term limits, the space program specifically. I want to see him try and do more exciting things while in office. Though I believe the limited budget is starting to make NASA be more innovative again.

avar3• 16 years ago

If you'd like to read a three-book thought experiment in this direction read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

gaius4• 16 years ago

He has a couple of interesting ideas, but the books are really badly written. He suffers from "hero inflation". Shortly after arriving on Mars his characters quite literally cure cancer and devise an political-economic system that works and that everyone agrees is completely fair. This is inbetween partying, taking drugs and getting laid non-stop. Which is fine, but it's barely even sci-fi, is there such a thing as the "space'n'shopping" genre?

Heinlein does it much better.

rlivsey• 16 years ago

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy [1] explores the colonisation of Mars and the political and societal issues that come from that.

Well worth a read if you haven't already.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

gaius4• 16 years ago

Political autonomy is fine, but remember this is not going to be like colonization on Earth where an ordinary citizen could actually just buy passage on a boat to America themselves. Getting the "chosen few" to Mars is going to require that ordinary taxpayers, who will never get to go themselves, make sacrifices. Is it worth it? Well I personally think it is, but that's up to the voters. However for the colonists to then turn around and say "screw you, suckers" is unreasonable.

timmaah• 16 years ago

Not sure it was just that easy for anyone to hop on a European ship back in the day and setup a new country.

He is talking decades after the first humans arrive. By that time commercial flights and colonization to mars may be possible.

avar3• 16 years ago

As Buzz points out, one of the biggest problem with the current space plans is the "we'll go there, and be back in time for tea" attitude. I.e. the requirement that anyone going to the Moon, Mars etc. be able to return.

We should be aiming for colonizing space with one-way trips and subsequent supply drops. The colonies should aim to become as self-sustainable as possible using robotic factories to mine and produce what they need on-location.

tokipin• 16 years ago

i want to share this all-things-space industry/NASA YouTube channel that i've been enjoying for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/spaceflightnow

hippich• 16 years ago

I'd be happy to be mars settler... but where I should start?

mkramlich3• 16 years ago

on the summit of Olympus Mons

it would be all downhill from there :)

asdflkj2• 16 years ago

He's right about the Moon landing being a stunt. But the Mars settlement will also be a stunt. Curing aging--that'd be historic. Creating a drug that will make us all happy and compassionate would be historic. Creating a "first world" country in the middle of an ocean where everyone in the world is welcome, as long as they obey the law and create wealth.

Space travel for our civilization is like a poor person putting gold-planted rims on his shitty car. Evolutionary theory has explanations for this sort of behavior.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

dstorrs• 16 years ago

> Space travel for our civilization is like a poor person putting gold-planted rims on his shitty car.

Well, that's one (wrong) way of putting it. I suspect you may be trolling, but here's some reasons that we might /want/ to pursue space travel:

1) Right now, all of humanity's eggs live in one basket -- literally. One large asteroid strike, sufficiently virulent pandemic, nuclear war, etc, would wipe out our species. Planting a self-sustaining colony on a non-Earth body fixes that.

2) A self-sustaining orbital technology (necessary for a colony) would allow us to build enough solar power satellites to give everyone on Earth enough clean, cheap energy for the next thousand years.

3) Putting a large chunk of our manufacturing on the Moon or in orbit would allow us to reduce the environmental impact of industry.

By the way..."a drug that would make us all happy and compassionate"? Huxley called it "soma", and I would not want to live in the Brave New World.

asdflkj2• 16 years ago

Huxley is sci-fi and not reality, and so are your reasons. If you want to avoid a pandemic, invest heavily in biotech. If you want clean energy, invest in nuclear plants and more efficient energy storage and such. If you want to avoid a nuclear war, invest in infrastructure that will allow the world's poor to create wealth and raise their standard of living and not want to kill anybody.

By instead dumping all those billions into space exploration, you are actively raising the chance of something terrible happening here on Earth, this "basket" whose destruction you consider so nonchalantly.

Buzz Aldrin Is Not All That Impressed With Walking on the Moon

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