Buzz Aldrin Outlines Vision To Settle Mars During SXSW Appearance In Austin

AUSTIN, TX — It's hard to top the experience of having once walked on the surface of the moon, yet Buzz Aldrin has found a new challenge that's hardly anticlimactic: Sending people to Mars in small groups at a time, toward eventually settling the red planet with a human population.

In a talk with Jeff Kluger of Time magazine, Adrin expounded on his new goal before a rapt audience at the Austin Convention Center Tuesday at SXSW. The 87-year-old former astronaut was greeted with a standing ovation after Kluger introduced him.

But he wasn't just there to talk. Aldrin availed himself of the massive SXSW audience to help premiere "Buzz Aldrin: Cycling Pathways to Mars," a virtual reality experience in collaboration with Time Inc.'s VR brand. The product is the first official release from holographic technology company 8i and the first room-scale VR experience featuring an actual human (namely Aldrin) to explain his vision of Mars settlement.

SXSW attendees were the first to experience the VR presentation at its Austin world premiere in the Virtual Cinema that preceded his 3:30 p.m. featured session with Kluger.

“While the moon landing was a monumental achievement for humanity, there’s no greater mission than mankind’s journey to Mars,” Aldrin, astronaut on Gemini 12 and Apollo 11 missions, said in a statement about his live talk. “I have a plan for creating a human settlement on Mars, and thanks to virtual reality and holographic technology from 8i, we now have an exciting new way to communicate this plan with the world and to leave my legacy behind for future generations of aspiring space travelers.”

There are very few people on Earth who've ever walked on the lunar surface, and, by extension, few who could get away with diminishing the accomplishment — as historic as it was — as a mere "flag poles and footprints program." Aldrin is one of those guys, having done the former and doing the latter during his SXSW talk.

“This is not a flag poles and footprints program,” he said, referring to past lunar missions where he and 11 other astronauts collected samples and conducted tests before returning to Earth with the requisite flag placement in the interstellar dirt.

Aldrin noted others share his vision to settle Mars, notably tech billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The former tycoon announced his Interplanetary Transport System to transport 100 people per flight to Mars toward sustaining a self-sustaining colony in the next 50 to 100 years, while the latter created Blue Origin in settling Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations.

“They are moving rather rapidly,” Aldrin said.

For Aldrin, the Mars settlement mission is personal: "“I don’t want to be remembered for just kicking moon dust."

In addition to his pioneering work as an astronaut, Aldrin served as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. His new project, "Buzz Aldrin's Cycling Pathways to Mars," will be distributed by Time Inc. to Time and Life VR audiences across multiple virtual reality platforms on HTC Vive and to Oculus Rift, according to 8i.

>>> Photo above of Buzz Aldrin courtesy of SXSW, photo of Kluger and Armstrong during talk by Tony Cantú