Buzz Aldrin believes that Elon Musk’s plan for Mars has at least one mistake, which can make the colonisation of the Red planet impossible. The astronaut offered the SpaceX founder to review his “bodacious” Martian plan.
Buzz Aldrin is the most experienced person on Earth in the Mars issue, this 87-year-old man was a part of NASA’s July 1969 Apollo 11 mission and one of the first humans on the moon. The plan of Elon Musk to colonise Mars is great but Buzz underlined that there is a problem with it. His professional opinion Mr Aldrin expressed in Austin on Tuesday at the SXSW Festivals & Conferences.
While Aldrin respects Musk’s ambition, he also points out that the tech billionaire is more focused on travelling to Mars than what people will do when they arrive there. The trip to Mars is long enough that human can’t go, stresses Aldrin; the minimum amount of time a person could stay on Mars would be 18 months. So, it is pretty logically to conclude that colonisers have got to live in something, and Musk’s team has to prepare for all of that.
“He’s a transportation person. He builds rockets,”
says Aldrin about SpaceX founder.
Aldrin, now 87, recalls talking to Musk about his plans with regards to the red planet three or four years ago over lunch.
Aldrin summarises the tech entrepreneur’s response this way:
“‘We know how to get to Mars. We are going to build a big rocket, put a dragon on top, and go land on Mars.'”
Musk has even named the hopefully Mars-bound spacecraft Dragon. At lunch, Aldrin pressed Musk about the next steps:
“Well, now, when your dragon lands on Mars with people, is there going to be anything down there for you to live in or do?”
