Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin tells Israelis to 'Get your a** to Mars!'

Cheers and applause erupted as American astronaut Dr Buzz Aldrin saluted an auditorium full of eager Israelis at The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in the northern city of Haifa Tuesday evening.

"Get your a** to Mars!", Aldrin declared to the starstruck crowd as he kicked an imaginary posterior into gear.

"These five words I've been telling everyone on planet Earth," Aldrin passionately announced in a slightly gravelly voice. "Let’s go for it!"

Dr. Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. was launched into a very special place in history, as well as in the hearts of people around the world on July 20, 1969 when he landed the Apollo 11 Lunar Module on the surface of the moon at 20:18 GMT. Six hours later, he became the second person to walk on the celestial body that humanity has been gazing up at for millennia.

Now, 47 years later, Aldrin is sharing his vision for establishing a permanent human presence on Mars.

"I am really the luckiest guy to come along when I did," he told the captivated audience of students, astronomers, astrophysicists and space enthusiasts. Aldrin was invited to the Technion as a guest lecturer with the International Space University, which this year held its summer session in Israel.

He explained that his mother Marion (whose maiden name happened to be “Moon”) was born the same year that the Wright brothers made aviation history with the first flight of an aircraft, and that his father was a pilot and aviation pioneer.

"It was magnificent for humanity to go somewhere it had been dreaming about," he said of landing on the moon. "It was a moment of the nation and the world coming together and achieving the impossible."

The next goal says Aldrin, is Mars.

"There is no greater endeavor that humanity will undertake for generations to come, than to establish a permanent human presence on another body in the solar system," he urged.

Aldrin's vision has evolved around what he calls "Cycling Pathways", which when completed would include two "cycler" spacecraft which continuously travel back and forth between Earth and Mars.

The two craft will never leave their flight paths as they continue their journey between the two planets.

Each time they pass by Earth, vehicles called landers will intercept and dock with the cycler craft in space, to be carried with it.

Before humans are sent to the Red Planet, nine empty exploration modules will be sent to the Mars surface, and two living quarter modules will be sent to its moon Phobos (target date beginning 2028).

When the first crew of six people is ready to be sent, a cycler craft will pick them up in three landers. Upon arriving at Mars, one unmanned lander will be sent to the planet's surface while the two others with the crew will land on Phobos to set up a base camp.

Once the crew is established on Phobos, they will remotely connect the nine exploration modules that were originally sent to the planet’s surface using robots to create the Mars Operations Complex (MOC).

By this time, a cycler craft will be on its way back to Mars with a second crew of six. If the first crew was successful in connecting the MOC on the surface of Mars, the new crew will land on Phobos while the original crew relocates to the planet's surface. Thus the first Mars settlement will be established.

If the first crew is unsuccessful in connecting the modules on the planet's surface, they will return to Earth, while the new crew continues to work on connecting the modules from Phobos.

Aldrin's plan includes doing similar smaller scale missions on the Moon and on an asteroid as scientists work their way towards Mars.

"If not now, when? If not us, who?",asked Aldrin, evoking a popular phrase coined by famous Jewish religious leader Rabbi Hillel.

When it comes to solving the challenges of a task such as this, it takes not only great minds, but also "dumb luck," says Aldrin. "I hope you have lots of good, dumb luck."

"It is not just rocket fuel that will get us there," he said. "It's human spirit—having your country behind you, and a coalition of countries."

"No other task can unite the nations of the world like this could, and should."