On the eve of his 80th birthday — not to mention the 40th anniversary of his walk on the moon — Buzz Aldrin challenges NASA to cancel the Ares part of its Constellation program and aim to colonize Mars. He writes about this in the forthcoming issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine. 

"As I approach my 80th birthday, I’m in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer when I see NASA heading down the wrong path. And that’s exactly what I see today. The agency’s current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020—a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago. Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA’s current lunar plan is a detour. It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Mars—and I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable future—we must drastically change our focus."

Last month, I interviewed Buzz Aldrin for an article that will appear in the August issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Here's a photograph from our interview, taken by Buzz's wife Lois. Note Buzz's tee-shirt — promoting higher education on Mars.

His new memoir, Magnificent Desolation, is a beautiful read. 

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