Buzz Aldrin, who survived a mission to the moon and an est workshop, wants to send pioneers to Mars and leave them there for awhile, perhaps not permanently as some others have suggested, but for a good, long spell. From Abby Phillip at the Washington Post:

“Buzz Aldrin has been on a mission to the moon. But these days, the legendary Apollo 11 astronaut is fixated on one thing: Getting humankind to Mars — and keeping them there for a long time.

Aldrin has some ideas about what a human mission to the red planet should look like. And unlike his triumphant return to Earth, Aldrin wants the Mars explorers of tomorrow to stay there. Potentially, for a very long time.

‘It [will] cost the world — and the U.S. — billions and billions of dollars to put these people there, and you’re going to bring them back?’ Aldrin said during a panel discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week. ‘What are you going to do when you bring them back here that can possibly compare [to] the value that they would be if they stayed there and Mars wasn’t empty? And then, they helped to work with the next group and it builds up a cadre of people. ‘When we’ve got 100 — or whatever it is — then we start bringing people back.'”