Buzz Aldrin likes to say things, and one of things he’s currently saying is that JFK really wanted NASA to shoot for Mars, not the moon, in the 1960s. Could be. There were tons of different space plans in post-war America that were weeded out before the moon became the target.

From Cameron Atfield at the Sydney Morning Herald:

President John F Kennedy’s famous moon speech could well have been a Mars speech had he not been talked down from his lofty ambitions, Buzz Aldrin revealed in Brisbane on Wednesday.

And the second human being to ever step on the surface of another world urged the United States to work closely with the Chinese in space to help promote peace on Earth.

Speaking at a superannuation conference in Brisbane, Dr Aldrin said he only recently learnt about President Kennedy’s belief his nation could launch a Mars mission in the 1960s.

“(NASA) told him it would take at least 15 years before we could put a man on the moon,” he said.

“Now, I recently learnt at MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) at the 100th anniversary of the aero/astro school department, that Kennedy had actually wanted us to go to Mars.

“He asked his engineers to figure it out and, after a weekend of rather intense calculations, they told him that Mars was just a little bit too far to go, but we could shoot for the moon as a more realistic goal.

“Can you imagine having only one weekend to figure that out for the president?”•