Shoot The Moon!

If late night talk show hosts and their teams of comedy writers have an ounce of fairness in them, they should be whipping out their checkbooks and writing a fat one to NASA.

BOMBING THE MOON?

This stuff writes itself.

OK. Maybe I’m not enough of a scientist or explorer to see the value of this boondoggle, but at least a collective national laugh must be worth something-----right?

As I understand it, we are curious (and by “we” I mean the eggheads with pocket protectors at NASA) to see if the Moon has water-or more accurately, ICE, lurking beneath the surface.

Here is a simulated look at the mission-it is silent for the first two minutes:





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaykH-RCBNY

I guess the idea is that if ice exists, then the Moon can support human life. This would have made sense for those looking to escape watching Tom Delay bust a move on “Dancing With The Stars”, but then again, he’s now off the show.
No one would question your decision to leave this planet to avoid seeing anything more about Michael Jackson either. But that’s not the main issue.

How about cost?

Imagine how many MILLIONS (or is it BILLIONS) of dollars were vaporized on impact! At a time when millions are out of work, the economy is still weak and our government’s decisions on spending for stimulus projects is under fire, how could we possibly justify burning up resources for a science fiction fantasy of sending colonists up to the moon for habitation?

If we were looking for OIL, that would be different. Just kidding.

Besides, what did the moon ever do to us?

A landmark for lovers, controller of our tides and giver of light on certain nights, the moon has been a friendly, benign neighbor and silent witness to all the calamity down here on Earth for millions of years. If a planet (or moon) has a soul, it must have been thanking its lucky stars (pardon the pun) to be completely free of human meddling-at least until recently.

The year 1969 and the Apollo 11 mission changed all that. Aside from the flag and litter we left behind, the moon must have said to itself, “Whew! That was a close one! I thought those guys would NEVER leave!” There goes the neighborhood.
And now this.

A missile shot into our closest galactic neighbor. Nice.

Ironic to me that the President wins the Nobel Prize for Peace on a day when he is prosecuting two wars simultaneously and blowing up the moon for good measure as well. Did I miss something here?

If we really wanted ice that badly, we could have gone to the 7-11. In fact, learning how to travel WITH water on this make-believe future mission might have been a lot cheaper too. Poland Spring would gladly help NASA find a way to send the H2O to the lunar surface.

The other point that has somehow escaped scrutiny is this: what if the rocket had gone haywire? What if, instead of going to the moon, the missile headed for, say….CHINA?
Imagine THAT phone call from Washington warning the Chinese to batten down the hatches.

And we KNEW there was water in China.

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