Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is a “MARS GUY”

With NASA Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin's comments this week to French news agency AFP that the first humans sent to Mars should be prepared to spend the rest of their lives there, its worth noting that for a number of years Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, wheeled around Los Angeles in a red Mercedes-Benz automobile with license plates that read “MARS GUY.”

One of Aldrin’s “MARS GUY” plates (California, # 8730546, issued in 2000) was auctioned off in March 2008 by Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. The plate, from Aldrin’s personal collection, sold for about $2,000.

Buzz Aldrin is a member of the Mars Society. He drew a “Roadmap to Mars” in an article in the December 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. This past summer, he answered “7 New Questions on the Future of Mars and Private Space” for the magazine’s blog.