NASA needs “serious reform or significant organizational overhaul,” Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and colleagues say in a draft paper.

They advise that it should replace George W. Bush’s 2004 Vision for Space Exploration, which called for returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020, with a plan that focuses on sending astronauts first to new targets, such as asteroids or the L2 libration point, which could host a space-station-like outpost and could also act as an intermediate step on the way to Mars.

The authors also propose that a new cabinet-level office be developed: the US Department of Space.

Full disclosure: KurzweilAI.net newsletter editor Amara D. Angelica copyedited the cited report.