The Scramble To Mars, Buzz Aldrin Is On A Fundraising Mission

NASA may not have the money to send people to Mars, but this doesn’t mean that the fight is over. Iconic astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently led an effort to raise money that will eventually put humanity on the red planet. Helping him is billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who believes that over a trillion humans could inhabit the whole of the solar system.

It’s no surprise that Aldrin and Bezos would be so invested in having as many people interested in the Mars mission as possible. As one of the first people to step on the moon, Aldrin is an actual space man. As for the Amazon CEO, Bezos also owns a company called Blue Origin, which aims to make commercial space travel a reality, Time reports.

Recently, the two attended the ShareSpace Foundation gala held at the Kennedy Space Center. At the event, Aldrin shared his thoughts on the current space program with the 400 people that attended.

"I like to think of myself as an innovative futurist," Aldrin said. "The programs we have right now are eating up every piece of the budget and it has to be reduced if we're ever going to get anywhere."

When it was his time to speak, Bezos touched on one of the most challenging aspects of commercial space travel; the costs. It’s simply a fact that sending even a handful of people to orbit, let alone Mars, would come with monumental expenses.

"We can have a trillion humans in the solar system. What's holding us back from making that next step is that space travel is just too darned expensive," Bezos said. "I'm taking my Amazon lottery winnings and dedicating it to (reusable rockets). I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do that."

Bezos basically wants to convert every single usable space in the solar system into either a resource or a colony for humans, Tech Radar reports. This includes planets and moons.