Whether or not one cares for Buzz Aldrin personally no doubt remains as to his commitment to manned space exploration. The outspoken "Dr. Rendezvous" has earned the respect of his counsel. But now he's approaching eighty years of age and he's mad. Mad at lost opportunities and wasted time. It's one thing for "rebels" to comment how far the current plans are off-track, but when someone of the stature of Buzz makes the same point prominently even non-space cadets take notice.

"As I approach my 80th birthday, I'm in no mood to keep my mouth shut any longer when I see NASA heading down the wrong path. And that's exactly what I see today. The ­agency's current Vision for Space Exploration will waste decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to reach the moon by 2020-a glorified rehash of what we did 40 years ago. Instead of a steppingstone to Mars, NASA's current lunar plan is a detour. It will derail our Mars effort, siphoning off money and engineering talent for the next two decades. If we aspire to a long-term human presence on Mars-and I believe that should be our overarching goal for the foreseeable future-we must drastically change our focus.

Right on Buzz. Don't shut up now when your voice is most needed for the future of the country's manned space effort. His thrust into the current debate is welcome, even if (1) he's never been far from it and (2) I don't agree 100% (i.e., we're not getting a Mars base without a Moon base no matter who gets there first). His Unified Space Vision could renew an international approach to human spaceflight modeled after the success of ISS. And he isn't silent about possible vehicle solutions (referred to as "Ares 3"), nor shy about identifying the root of the problem.

"This Ares 3 would use shuttle components to minimize development time and costs. Two well-studied concepts could serve as a starting point: the Jupiter Direct 232 shuttle-stack configuration developed by a group of moonlighting NASA rebels, or the Shuttle-C side-mount cargo launcher that NASA studied two decades ago. Ideally, this Ares 3 would slowly and affordably evolve to be fully reusable.

"But for this dream to happen, NASA needs to dramatically change its ways. Its myopic Vision for Space Exploration will never get us to Mars. Progressive innovation and enlightened international cooperation will. President Obama and Congress need to set NASA right-and soon.

"There, I've said it. No regrets this time."