The square-jawed hero astronauts of 1960s NASA went through marriages at a pretty ferocious clip, as you might expect from careerist monomaniacs, but none has had a more colorful, complicated life than Buzz Aldrin, who successfully walked on the moon but failed at selling used cars after he fell to Earth with a thud. Dr. Aldrin, as he prefers to be called, is now spearheading a plan to build Mars colonies. 

From Marcia Dunn at the AP:

MELBOURNE, Fla. (AP) — Buzz Aldrin is teaming up with Florida Institute of Technology to develop “a master plan” for colonizing Mars within 25 years.

The second man to walk on the moon took part in a signing ceremony Thursday at the university, less than an hour’s drive from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The Buzz Aldrin Space Institute is set to open this fall.

The 85-year-old Aldrin, who followed Neil Armstrong onto the moon’s surface on July 20, 1969, will serve as a research professor of aeronautics as well as a senior faculty adviser for the institute.

He said he hopes his “master plan” is accepted by NASA and the country, with international input. NASA already is working on the spacecraft and rockets to get astronauts to Mars by the mid-2030s.

Aldrin is pushing for a Mars settlement by approximately 2040. More specifically, he’s shooting for 2039, the 70th anniversary of his own Apollo 11 moon landing, although he admits the schedule is “adjustable.”

He envisions using Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos, as preliminary stepping stones for astronauts. He said he dislikes the label “one-way” and imagines tours of duty lasting 10 years.•