Apollo astronauts look ahead ... to Mars?

WASHINGTON - The astronauts who first landed on the moon aren't dwelling on their small lunar steps. Instead, two of them on Sunday urged mankind to take a giant leap to Mars.

In one of their few joint public appearances, the crew of Apollo 11 spoke on the eve of the 40th anniversary of man's first landing on the moon, but didn't get soggy with nostalgia. They preferred to talk about the future and the more distant past.

On Monday, the three astronauts will get another chance to make the pitch for a Mars trip, this time to someone with a little more sway: President Barack Obama.

Sunday night, a packed crowd at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum — 7,000 people applied in a lottery for 485 seats — didn't get the intimate details of the Eagle's landing on the moon with little fuel left, or what the moon looked like, or what it felt like to be there.

A pitch for Mars from Aldrin
They got a pitch for Mars from the second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin. He said the best way to honor the Apollo astronauts "is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration."

Aldrin said trips to the moon should be seen only as a "steppingstone" to wider travels, including flybys of comets and asteroids (such as Apophis, an asteroid that is due to come close to Earth in 2029 and just might collide in 2036). He laid out a detailed timeline that would lead to Mars landings by 2035.

"I believe we deserve to do a little bit more than footprints on the moon. ... I believe we can do that," Aldrin said. Then he followed up by quoting Obama's campaign slogan: "Yes, we can."  

A history lesson from Armstrong
The first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, discussed Apollo 11 for only about 11 seconds. He gave a professorial lecture titled "Goddard, Governance and Geophysics," looking at the inventions and discoveries that led to his historic "small step for a man" on July 20, 1969.

Armstrong pointed out that American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard's invention of the liquid-fueled rocket eventually led to Nazi Germany's use of V-2 rockets as instruments of war. That, in turn, led to the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Amid the Cold War, the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 sparked Sputnik and the space race that followed — with the moon landing as President John Kennedy's chosen finish line.

He said the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."

Armstrong's bottom line was that science, statecraft and military policy had to come together to produce his "one small step." Would humans have explored the moon if it weren't for Goddard, the challenges of governance and the International Geophysical Year? "Perhaps," Armstrong said, "but certainly never on the schedule as it actually occurred."

A ‘new economic paradigm’ from Collins
Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins, who circled the moon alone while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on it, said the moon was not interesting, but Mars is.

Slideshow   Month in Space Catch a blast from the sun, a clash between galaxies and other outer-space highlights from October. more photos

"Sometimes I think I flew to the wrong place. Mars was always my favorite as a kid and it still is today," Collins said. "I'd like to see Mars become the focus, just as John F. Kennedy focused on the moon."

But Collins spent most of his time reflecting on Earth rather than on other worlds. Not even the famous pictures of our home planet as seen from space provide a true sense of its beauty from afar, he contended. "It doesn't sparkle like the real thing did," Collins said.

In the 40 years since Apollo 11, Earth's population has grown from 3 billion to more than 6 billion, said Collins, who spent stints as a State Department official and the director of the National Air and Space Museum after his moon trip. He feared that a global growth agenda would not be "wise, healthy or sustainable" in the long run.

"We need a new economic paradigm that somehow can produce prosperity without this kind of growth," he said.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Space elevator team wins $900,000 from NASA Space junk buzzes station while crew sleeps Moon’s ‘friends’ say no to future lunar crashes New survey finds 22 of the earliest galaxies Cosmic Log: See starbirth up close Stars: Cosmic road signs to intelligent aliens?   Ten alien abductions, from ‘V’ to ‘X-Files’ New type of supernova discovered New theory tries to explain missing matter   Month in space: What a blast! Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: