From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

Space travel, the past, and the future.

Hello again, I'm Orin-Aulny, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International.

A daily look at the issues Americans care about most.

Forty years ago today,

humans accomplished a goal as old as the species when two men walked on the moon. Today we'll talk

with Moon Walker number two, Buzz Aldrin, about the moon itself and the depression and alcoholism

he faced on returning to Earth. Aldrin's among those who say the moon itself is a dead end,

but that humans could get to Mars before 2050.

He insists we should.

Others point out we've been there for five years with robots, which make more precise observations and never need to come home.

On reporter's notebook later on, I.F. Stone, the reporter who blogged before blogging had been invented.

First, here's the news.

Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica and from the Public Radio

International Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur

Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to the idea that all people

deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive life. Information at gatesfoundation.org.

Hello again, Warren-Anne, back with To the Point. Forty years ago today, Buzz Aldrin became the

second man to walk on the moon.

Was that the outer limit of human capacity? Should we let robots take it from there? Or should we

humans try to reach Mars? We'll talk with Buzz Aldrin and others. On reporter's notebook,

we'll hear about I.F. Stone, once accused as a Russian spy, later celebrated as Washington's premier investigative

...