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Buzz Aldrin, Purdue Engineers Plan Mars Hotels
Thursday, February 7, 2002

"Some day, people will be going to Mars on a regular basis," Longuski said. "Most people are convinced that we are going to do this; the only question is when."

Purdue University News Release
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is leading a team of researchers, including engineers at Purdue University, to design a new class of spacecraft that would serve as orbiting hotels perpetually cruising between Earth and Mars.

The "cycler" spacecraft would constantly ferry people and materials between the two planets, enabling earthlings to explore, commercially develop and eventually colonize the Red Planet.

"We believe these regular planetary flybys would create an entirely new economic and philosophic approach to space exploration," the researchers wrote in a December report prepared for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Reliable, reusable and dependable cycler transportation can be the key to carry humanity into the next great age of exploration, expansion, settlement and multi-planetary commerce."

Aldrin is working with a team of researchers, including professors and engineering graduate students at Purdue, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Texas. The former astronaut is an engineer by training and holds a doctorate from MIT.

"We are going to put in a proposal for a more detailed study to narrow down some of the choices of the different kinds of cyclers and decide which ones seem to fit into a very nice operational mission," Aldrin said.
(More: Spaceflight Now News Source)
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Dan