We like Buzz Aldrin. He was the second man on the moon, so we assume he lost a pretty crucial game of Scissors, Paper, Rock up there, but we’ve never heard him gripe about it. Better yet, for an old bastard he can still handle himself. A few years ago an Apollo moon landing hoax theory wackjob confronted Aldrin outside his hotel in Beverly Hills. He called Aldrin a coward, a liar, a thief and he said, “You’re the one who said you walked on the moon and you didn’t”. Aldrin punched him in the face. The police and the city’s prosecutor didn’t even file charges.
Our point is, when Buzz speaks, we listen. In a recent interview Aldrin claimed Mars offered far greater potential than the moon as a place for habitation. With what appears to be vast reserves of frozen water, Mars is “nearer terrestrial conditions, much better than the Moon and any other place,” he said.
Apparently NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are sketching tentative plans for a manned mission to Mars that could take place between 2030 and 2040. Imagine in a few decades, watching humans land on Mars. Mars would make the moon its bitch. We could probably even swing the whole afternoon off.
Aldrin did, however, go on to say that anybody who goes should be prepared for the fact they may never come back – like the first settlers in Australia knew it was unlikely they’d ever see England again, for instance.
“You need to go there more with the psychology of knowing that you are a pioneering settler and you don’t look forward to going back home again after a couple a years,” he said. Even at the most favourable time a round trip to Mars would take around a year and a half.
Where’s all this going you ask? Well, there is a way to experience Mars without waiting half your life to spend 18 months on a shuttle with a bunch of randy space cowboys and (presumably) pregnant female scientists. It’s obvious where we’re heading with this but we’re too dedicated to this long-winded setup to back out now. The answer of, course, is Red Faction Guerrilla – easily one of the most exciting games of 2009 and, indeed, this generation.
It’d be easy to write off the above as wistful hyperbole – we don’t doubt a great many of you have been subjected to years and years of next-big-things, sure-fire-hits and guaranteed-blockbusters, some of which have made good on their promises and a great many of which have not. We’re not exaggerating, however, when we say RFG isn’t just exciting – it’s important.
