I'm having trouble figuring out how to start this post. My Ridiculous Bullshit-O-Meter is way up past the top of its Bullshit Measuring capacities, and I'm just so... I dunno, disappointed? Apalled? Amused? Terrified?
Here's the thing. This - NASA'S Mission to Bomb the Moon - is a real headline. As are all the others like it. As is the actual mission. I haven't exhaustively researched the entire plan beyond reading a bunch of articles online, so I suppose there's a chance (please, God, please) that this is a hoax, but I just can't bring myself to really look too far into this. It's just too ridiculous.
Here's the idea: NASA is hoping to put people on the moon again in 2018, to establish a base there as a launch pad for explorations to Mars and so on and so forth. Which I suppose is a commendable enough goal, albeit one that there are major political and practical reasons to hesitate before supporting. Before they send some of our red white and blue brothers up there, though, they want to check out what kinds of possible natural resources they might have available to them when they get there. They're hoping, mainly, to find some water, which they think might possibly be hidden at the north and/or south poles of the moon, left over from icy comets and such that have left giant craters there in the cold and the dark.
So, in order to determine if there's water at or near the surface, NASA is going to send up a spacecraft to orbit the moon for a few months - for the purposes of look for an exact target for the Centaur rocket that they will then fire. At the moon. At the speed of a bullet.
They're expecting the resultant cloud of debris sent up from the impact to fan out for considerable miles from the moon's surface - they're thinking it will be visible from earth - and then they're going to send in a "shepherding spacecraft [which] will follow close behind, taking pictures and analysing the ejected debris as it looks for evidence of water," very much in the style of, oh, I don't know, a Star Wars video game where you have to fly through a field of debris in your little spaceship.
Yes. That's the plan. We're going to bomb. The MOON. In the name of science! And nationalism! And showing those Communists who's got the best bombs and space program! ...oh, wait, we're NOT in the Cold War anymore? The Russians aren't communists? Well, shit... Um... I guess we can show the North Koreans, right? We're still not into them, right? Sure, yeah, let's do it! Show that Kim Jong Sick guy what's what, huh? Show him the moon BELONGS to US! Cause we said so!
I'll give you guys three guesses as to who signed this one into action. That's right, kiddies, it was none other than our favorite former president, George W. "You Had Me At Bomb" Bush. I'm not sure if he was in on the actual planning of the bombing portion of this operation, but my gut instincts tell me he was at least gung-ho into it when he heard explosions were involved.
While I do have to admit that the idea of looking up into the night sky and seeing a bomb going off on the moon is pretty damn cool, I also just... I can't... It's so ridiculous! I mean, can you really honestly tell me that this is the most efficient and responsible way to go about this? Can someone from NASA please explain to me, in a calm and steady voice and not while panting with little-boy enthusiasm over sending a bomb into the cosmos, why this blatant show of overzealous Hollywood weapons-mongering was chosen as the best course of action to determine whether there might be water on the moon? It's going to take a lot of convincing for me to believe that this wasn't just a bunch of adolescent males playing video games late at night after drinking way too much Mountain Dew and going, "Dude, you know what would be so cool to do?"
Sure, I can see how not actually having to set anything down on the moon's surface in a responsible, non-pyrotechnic way could be more difficult and expensive than using a bomb, but really, think about this. Here's NASA, a group of scientists with a huge budget who like sending large white phallic things into space using huge amounts of energy and taxpayer money, basically showing off as much as possible, making plans to colonize the moon. Not that that's not a worthy goal, especially if we're looking to branch out to study other planets, and especially if someday we might have to use other planets to survive. But, here's the hangup I have:
I saw a man, an American man, on the train yesterday, with a copy of a newspaper article on a sign board about how he'd been burned by acid. I couldn't understand what he was saying, because he basically had no lips or tongue left. His ears were little misshapen buds on either side of his head, his nose was a little nubbin holding up his sunglasses, which I'm assuming were there to hide the disfigurement of his eyes. His hands and arms were horribly mangled. He was asking everyone to spare some change to help him pay for his medical expenses and reconstructive surgery (I think, anyway - again, I couldn't hear him well, but he might have just been begging for change because I'm sure he can't get much of a job looking like he does).
Let me be perfectly clear: this man was burned so horribly by acid that he has to wear sunglasses to keep from upsetting people. He has no LIPS. He is an American. He cannot afford to pay his medical bills and apparently nobody will HELP him except for strangers on the subway.
And yet, we can bomb the moon to look for water. Now do you see why I just can't get behind this?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment