Buzz Aldrin

The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world.

We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family. Her father committed suicide. She committed suicide the year before I went to the moon.

I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things.

I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, 'When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?' I've heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.

Anything we can do in the near future that begins to stimulate the interest of people - seeing somebody down the street have an opportunity to go into space - buoys up the whole neighborhood.

Certainly, I've never wanted to live on past achievements.

There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly.

I think there would be no shortage of applicants to the government astronaut corps to be settlers on the planet Mars. And I think this would be very inspiring.

We should've asked China to be a portion of the space station. We should've worked out ways that we can... just give away the technology that we have that puts things up into space, with cooperation up above the atmosphere that's needed to help each other.

I remember it was hard to believe that I was taking a step onto the lunar surface.

Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.

Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can't believe that people wouldn't line up for that possibility.

It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the Moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.

Astronauts are not superhuman. They lead ordinary lives and have varied personalities.

For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.

Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.

I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.

There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'