Moonwalker pans NASA's plans

Buzz Aldrin includes one-way Mars missions in his plans for NASA's space programme. Photo / AP

The second man to walk on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, has come out swinging at NASA's manned space programme.

His biggest beef seems to be around NASA's planned five-year gap between the space shuttle's scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the new Ares and Orion rockets, which are intended to take the US back to the moon.

According to Aldrin, NASA's current plans are rubbish, so he has come up with his own alternative manned space programme on the Popular Mechanics website.

The guts of Aldrin's plan centres around containing costs and on colonising Mars as well as going back to the moon where we've boldly already been.

Aldrin believes that Nasa's current plans will waste result in decades of wasted effort and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars as the agency gears up to reach the moon by 2020.

Aldrin has slated this plan as "a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago" and has concerns that this strategy will see money and engineering talent taken away from Mars.

Aldrin has instead proposed what he calls a "Unified Space Vision".

Central to his alternative plan is stretching out the space shuttle programme to 2015 in order to continue to service the international space station. He reckons the cost of extending shuttle flights could be made up by cancelling Ares rocket programme and using existing Delta IV Atlas V satellite launchers, upgraded for human flight alongside the space shuttle.

More significantly, Aldrin also proposes that Nasa work with other international space agencies (e.g. China, Europe, Russia, India and Japan) who could share costs by doing what he calls "the lion's share of the planning, technical development and funding", leaving the US to provide technological leadership.

This, believes Aldrin, would also allow both the US and China to avoid any wasted duplication resulting from another costly space race to the moon and would instead allow them to pool resources.

By inviting China to join the international space station partnership, the costs associated with the space station could also be reduced by utilising China's Shenzhou spacecraft to help transport cargo and astronauts.

Most controversial however is Aldrin's position on Mars. Whilst he acknowledges that the moon may have commercial potential, he emphasises that humans should commit to staying on Mars permanently.

By making Mars missions one-way he argues that the missions will be technically fraught and significantly less expensive.

Aldrin argues that "Instead of explorers, one-way Mars travellers will be 21st-century pilgrims, pioneering a new way of life."

Given the current and long term fate for NASA is currently up for grabs as President Obama and Congress examine its options, Aldrin's comments could adds further impetus to major changes being made at America's space agency.