Words cannot express how much I admire Buzz Aldrin. But…
He seems to think that America faced a choice of going to the moon or going to Mars, and wisely chose the latter. NASA’s new  course in space is allegedly to spend time and money doing research and finding the best way to send people to [...]

Appearing at The Free Library in Philadelphia, a day after the 40th anniversary of his moon walk, Buzz Aldrin spoke out against returning to the moon.
“It’s a bad place.” he said. “I ought to know. I’ve been there.”
Aldrin spoke before a packed auditorium (and an additional room full of paid simulcast viewers), projecting a lighthearted [...]

Just a few days ago, in this space, I defended NASA’s Ares booster against opponents testifying at the Augustine Commission—the committee that is re-evaluating America’s manned space program.
After reading an interview with Buzz Aldrin, I’m having second thoughts.

Moon rocket, not Mars rocket
Ares is designed to return to the moon. Aldrin thinks this is unnecessary—no, actually [...]

Buzz Aldrin is again making…well, a buzz!
He’s on a book tour and, of course, the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 is coming up. And he’s been interviewed by Deborah Solomon for the New York Times.
In the article, we learn a few interesting tidbits:

Aldrin says the days of American predominance in space is past.
He thinks we [...]

The media have been describing it as raising serious questions about the reliability of the Soyuz spacecraft, but I consider today’s manual docking with the International Space Station to be a triumph.
There was, indeed, a problem. The automatic docking system failed, and an actual human being—a cosmonaut—performed a successful docking manually.
Man and machine
To me, that’s [...]