He was the first man with Neil Armstrong to set foot on the Moon in 1969. Today, at the age of 85, his ambition is to go to Mars and establish a human colony in less than 25 years. Nothing prevents us from dreaming, but on what is this ambition based?
A at a time when six humans, including one French, are participating in the "programme". hi-seas The famous NASA astronaut inaugurates his "Space Shuttle" this week, as they "lock themselves in a bubble at the bottom of a Hawaiian volcano for a 365-day, motionless journey in preparation for future Martian conquests. Buzz Aldrin Space Institute on the campus of the University of Florida. The purpose of the project? To colonize the Red Planet in 2039 by implementing the project called "Cycling Pathways to Occupy Mars.". It is a system of spacecraft sending humans in a continuous stream to the planet Mars, using asteroids and the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, as staging and bounce points towards the target.
" I was very proud of what I did at NASA with the Gemini 12 and Apollo 11 programs, but I would like to be remembered for my future contributions". said Buzz Aldrin at the opening of his Centre. He adds, as a promise in the form of a challenge: " You haven't seen anything yet! "
The famous astronaut's plan to conquer Mars has been maturing since 1985. It's not just a question of dreaming, as he has developed and patented many systems to achieve this ambition, such as modular space stations, reusable rockets ( Starboosters), multi-crew space flight modules. He founded Starcraft Boosters, Inc., a company that designs and develops interplanetary rockets. He is also the promoter of the Buzz Aldrin's ShareSpacea non-profit organization dedicated to instilling a passion for space, science and technology in children. These future Earthlings relocated to Mars?
Buzz Aldrin isn't the only one with dreams of Mars. NASA is developing its own plans to send humans there in the 2030s using the Orion spacecraft, a new capsule designed for human spaceflight (it currently takes 250 days to travel to Mars).
The ESA (European SPACE agency), for its part, dreams of a permanent human colony on the Moon: its Director General, Johann-Dietrich Wörner, is thinking about several projects, based on the rapid development of 3D printing, with the principle of installing a small Rover vehicle capable of driving on the lunar surface and equipped with a print head that would collect regolite, a material that is spread over the surface of the moon. Thanks to it, within a few weeks he would build a porous and resistant dome that could be used to shelter a few settlers, thus protected from harmful cosmic radiation, from the temperature differences that reign on the planet (between 123°C and - 150°C in one day) and from the fall of micrometeorites.
It is true that these projects are still far from being feasible. Not for technical or scientific reasons, but for vulgar financial reasons. Indeed, without a significant increase in the budgets allocated to this conquest, all this will remain only a dream. In spite of the difficulties, many people say that it is still worth a try. Ideas and projects are multiplying, as is the international project of the Dutch company Mars One.
So is the visionary boss of the private American company SpaceXElon Lusk, who believes that the colonisation of Mars is of paramount importance for the human species and that thinking of another home for mankind is not so absurd as that. Indeed, SpaceX plans to put new transport ships into service within the next two or three years, including the possibility of a reusable shuttle to bring back the first adventurers from the Red Planet.
According to the cosmologist Stephen Hawking, mankind has no other choice for its survival than Space, having exhausted all the Earth's resources, has caused a climate change in devastating horror,...
Nice debates and nice dreams, but they should not distract us from a more down-to-earth ambition: to save our planet now. For it is by no means certain that we will get a replacement so easily.
