Astronaut Buzz Aldrin thinks Congress needs to stop inhibiting the space program and the government should quit trying to compete with the private sector. Instead, it should leverage the space program to build bridges with other countries, especially China.

“The government is now spending your money building old technology to compete with [billionaire Elon Musk's private aerospace company] SpaceX,” Aldrin said to a group of philanthropists during a conversation with Steve Forbes at the fifth annual Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy in Manhattan. “The government should not be spending your money to build an old heritage rocket.”

Aldrin, who almost half a century ago made history with Neil Armstrong when they became the first two men to set step on the moon, has more recently been devising a master plan for missions to Mars . He says that with reusable landers and less clunky rockets, we should be able to create a new and better Apollo mission. 

In addition, he said, while no one nation can go to Mars by itself, a global lunar coalition involving various space agencies, including China, Russia and Japan, should make the mission feasible. “We would not be well-advised to compete with China in space,” said Aldrin. “That’s where we can do things together like we did with the Russians [in the 1970s].” 

At age 86, Aldrin has enjoyed a career spanning flying jets at war zones to making historic space travel. He says his career choice was almost inevitable given the household he grew up in: his father was an Air Force  colonel and his mother’s maiden name was Marion Moon. Aldrin earned his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point before joining the Air Force and he was a fighter pilot in Korea and Germany. He then went on to earn his Doctorate Of Science in Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.