Mission to Mars by Buzz Aldrin

extraterrestrial commodity that would minimize the need to carry water from Earth to the moon. Not only can it be processed for human consumption, it can also be transformed into fuel. Yet another bonus about this crater is that roughly 72 miles away is MalapertMountain, a peak that is perpetually visible from Earth and can be topped by a radio relay station.
    While there is mounting consensus regarding Shackleton as a future encampment, resolution of the ice issue is likely to require more on-the-spot survey work by robotic craft.
Free Enterprise
    As can be hammered out at the Hawaii-based International Lunar Research Base prototype, a crew situated at the Earth-moon L2 position would assemble this permanent facility via telerobotics, piece by piece, module by module. America’s return to the moon is one that is robotic, to offer infrastructure and leadership. This pathway eventually spurs private-sector involvement and commercial science that leads to commercial mining. The free enterprise system, if we have a system that’s worth its salt, ought to do reasonably well without massive government subsidy. It’s American leadership that can create the conditions for commercial development of the moon.
    There is a choice to be made. As a country, we can sit around and do nothing. Alternatively, we can take a position of general awareness and accept the role of leadership that we carved out for ourselves in the 1960s and 1970s.
    It’s very important, in my analysis, to never forget the fact that Apollo affirmed America as a leader in space. Apollo also inspired a new generation to pursue scientific and engineering careers. We should not reengage in a second moon race—we won that contest more than 40 years ago. We should helpothers in finding their niche in space, while, at the same time, focus on our longer-term goal of permanent human presence on Mars.
    Without a doubt, new discoveries about the moon lie ahead.
    That, too, is the sense of Paul Spudis, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. The moon is close, it is interesting, and it’s useful, he observes. As the rocket flies, traversing cislunar space—traveling from Earth to the moon—takes just three days. Additionally, the moon contains a record of planetary history, evolution, and processes unavailable for study on Earth or elsewhere. In terms of its usefulness, projects at the moon can help retire risk for future planetary missions—say sending people to Mars or to the asteroids—by sharpening our space skills and putting to the test exploration hardware for future deep space sojourns.
    All this adds up to something Spudis likens to a mantra for moon exploration: “To arrive, survive, and thrive.”
    Detailed work done by Spudis, gleaned from moon-circling spacecraft instruments that he has helped to develop and operate, reveals that the moon’s north pole—at a
minimum
—is home to a large repository of ice. He places it at 600 million metric tons, which, when converted to liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, is the equivalent of fuel for a space shuttle launch every day for 2,200 years.
    Water is by far the easiest and most useful substance that can be extracted from the moon and utilized to establish a cislunar spacefaring transportation infrastructure. Establishing a permanent foothold on the moon opens the space frontier to many parties for many different purposes, Spudis contends.By creating a reusable, extensible cislunar spacefaring system, a “transcontinental railroad” in space can be built, connecting two worlds, Earth and the moon, as well as enabling access to points in between.
    Spudis and I share a similar perspective. A future lunar outpost can be internationalized, a common-use facility for science, exploration, research, and commercial activity.
    Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and the last man to step onto the lunar surface, has argued for and written extensively about mining helium-3