Buzz Aldrin Has New Yorkers Buzzing About Mars

NEW YORK — When Buzz Aldrin's new book landed in stores Tuesday (May 7), starstruck fans turned out in droves to see the legendary Apollo 11 astronaut talk about his vision for creating the first permanent human colony on Mars.

At least 300 people packed into the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Union Square, some carrying stacks of Aldrin's  "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration" (National Geographic Books) to be signed, while others just tried to catch a glimpse of the second man ever to walk on the moon.

In the audience, one boy with an Apollo pen made rocket ship noises and at least one baby and one teenage girl separately were dressed in mock NASA astronaut flight suits. Nearly everyone rose to their feet to snap pictures when Aldrin made his entrance. [Buzz Aldrin's Visions for Mars Missions & More (Video)]

"I think it's pretty awesome that he's probably one of the only people in the city right now who has been off this planet," said Philip Gazzara, a Queens man who was excited to stumble on the event on his way to Trader Joe's.

Buzz Aldrin became a household name his star power when he set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, bounding off the lunar module just after his crewmate, the late Neil Armstrong. But today Aldrin is firmly against sending humans back to the place he famously explored, for now at least.

He thinks the U.S. and a group of international partners need to set their sights on Mars, and ultimately he doesn't want to send astronauts there only to bring them back home. Aldrin envisions sending space pilgrims to colonize the forbidding planet, and his book he lays out a plan to get there, which includes an initial expedition to Mars' largest moon Phobos followed by deep-space cruisers that could ferry people from Earth to Mars.

In a Q&A session with co-author, Leonard David, a veteran space journalist and frequent contributor toSPACE.com, Aldrin touched on the historical implications of putting bootprints on the Red Planet.

"History, hundreds and thousands of years in the future, will observe that moment of making that commitment to do that," Aldrin said. Whichever leader decides to do so, Aldrin added, would exceed Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Christopher Columbus in solar system fame.

Aldrin hopes to have an American president commit to continuous manned Mars exploration by 2019, and he is confident that space officials will have no trouble finding willing pioneers. The astronaut pointed to the 78,000 people who have already applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One.

Not everyone in the audience was as optomistic about Aldrin's vision. Tom Marshall, who came in from New Jersey, had serious doubts about the plan, hinging on U.S. partnership with other countries like China. "If we don't get along down here, we can't make it up there."

Asked why he came out to see Aldrin, Marshall simply said, "He landed on the moon."

That stark fact proves endlessly captivating to Aldrin's fans and the astronaut handles the inevitable flurry of questions about his Apollo 11 lunar landing with wit. One young boy in the audience asked Aldrin what he did during his trip to the moon, to which the astronaut replied, "We waited until it was time to come home." Another kid asked what it first felt like to step on the moon, and Aldrin answered shortly, "It felt good," teasing that "fighter pilots don't have feelings; we have ice water running through our veins."

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When New Yorkers Look Up: Skywatching in the Big Apple (SPACE.com)

NEW YORK — New York City is a great place for spotting movie stars. As for the celestial ones, though, not so much: The night sky above the city that never sleeps doesn't get very dark. But that fact doesn't keep diehard skywatchers from looking up.

"Right now there aren't very many stars visible," Linda Prince, an amateur astronomer from Long Island, told SPACE.com. "Just a handful here."

Prince was one of approximately 500 stargazers on the banks of New York's East River Friday night (June 3) for "A Night of Stargazing at Brooklyn Bridge Park," an event held as part of the 2011 World Science Festival. Attendees waited in long lines for the chance to look through telescopes pointed at the few celestial objects that did show themselves — including the bright stars Vega and Arcturus, and the ringed planet Saturn, which for obvious reasons turned out to be the crowd favorite.

"I saw stars on one telescope and the planet of Saturn on another, which was amazing," said Julie Errico of Brooklyn. "A little tiny, but I saw the rings and everything, so that was cool." [Photos: The Rings and Moons of Saturn]

Siblings Patrick and Grace Cognato made the trek to Brooklyn all the way from Staten Island to look through the telescopes. "We saw the rings of Saturn and we saw double stars," Patrick said. "That's two stars orbiting each other."

What are stars?

Before the stargazing got under way, a panel of experts regaled the crowd on the joys of astronomy. They each gave their take on what those little points of light up there actually are.

"They're suns," said Timothy Ferris, an award-winning astronomy book author and documentary filmmaker. Suns are thermonuclear devices, he explained, which undergo fusion reactions that spew heat into space. Stars that twinkle with a blue-ish hue burn hotter than those that look red, he explained.

"They are so many different things for me. They are songs, they are poems, they are beauty," said Charles Liu, an astrophysicist at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island. "A star is a factory that creates the building blocks that make us who we are. Every atom of carbon, iron and calcium in our bodies was formed in those nuclear processes that Tim described and then sprayed outward into the universe over billions of years."

Carter Emmart, an astronomy artist at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, said, "Our view of the universe is also sort of a time machine, because light travels at a fixed speed." He pointed out Arcturus, a yellowy-orange star that appeared in the eastern part of the sky. "That light you're seeing left 40 years ago. So if you're 40 years old, that light left when you were a baby."

"Wow, thank you, I'll take that!" said a 40-year-old woman in the audience.

Yeah, stars!

Barbara Freeman, a Brooklyn physician who moonlights as a stargazer, set up two of her telescopes at Brooklyn Bridge Park on Friday evening. New Yorkers, like everyone else, appreciate stars, she said. [Hubble Telescope's Amazing Photos]

"It has been said that there are more telescopes in New York than any other location. Everyone jokes that a lot of people must be looking in other people's windows," Freeman said.

"But actually, astronomy and stars, I think people always have an interest in them. When I tell people I'm an amateur astronomer, they always say 'yeah, stars!' Even when they don't see them, they still have an interest in knowing what's going on up there."

Natalie Wolchover is a staff writer for Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site of SPACE.com. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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