Viggo Mortensen turned down a chance to pay Aragorn again???

     So people have been bitching about Peter Jackson stretching Tolkien's "The Hobbit" into three books for almost a year.  Whatever.  I'm over it.  If Jackson wants to backfill the third film with writing from other Tolkien works I say have at it--as long as it is entertaining.  With the return of actors Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, and Orlando Bloom to the world of Middle-Earth, many wondered if Viggo Mortensen would return as Aragorn.
     Turns out Mortensen was offered a chance to return as far back as 2008:

Before they started shooting, back in 2008, one of the producers did ask if I would be interested. I said, 'You do know, don't you, that Aragorn isn't in The Hobbit? That there is a 60-year gap between the books?'

     Interesting.  Now before you go all "Um how could the character return when he barely looks forty in LOTR?" let me drop some nerd knowledge on you.  Aragorn's ancestry actually dates back to the blood of Numenor, a destroyed land occupied by a group of humans that had extremely long lives, up to 500 years in fact.  If you watch the extended edition of The Two Towers you actually find out that Aragorn is in fact 87 at the time the LOTR takes place.  This would have made his character in The Hobbit (had he appeared) 27 years old. 
     However, while it is feasible that Aragorn's character could have returned I don't see how it would have been feasible for Mortensen to return.  The man is his mid fifties after all.  He's not gonna pass for twenty-seven.
     Now even though Mortensen declined to return I wouldn't rule out the character of Aragorn returning.  It may just be a younger version of him and obviously a different actor.*  Jackson has an additional ten weeks of shooting this summer and he plays things pretty close to the vest, so it is not out of the realm of possibility. 
     Mortensen is currently working on adapting Mari Sandoz's novel "The Horsecatcher" into a screenplay which he also hopes to direct.  Meanwhile The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug opens December 13th of this year.

*I wonder if they'd consider Stuart Townsend for the role, the guy who was replaced by Viggo Mortensen for the part of Aragorn in the original trilogy?