the circus

so... the moon is like, public domain, now?

because i'm pretty sure we just blew it up like we own it.

dateline: october9, 2009

NASA officially runs out of shit to do. decides to crash some old satellite machinery into the dark side of the moon to "see if we can find water there".

last night, while most of us were sleeping, NASA launched a missile mission at the cabeus crater on the south pole of the moon. they often claimed that the target site was on the dark side of the moon, despite the fact that they simultaneously bragged that you could watch the impact from earth with nothing more impressive than a 10 inch telescope (i think i deserve a little credit here for not venturing into the "impressive 10 inch telescope" joke).

i would think that blowing off a chunk of the moon would be big news, but so far i have yet to find much writing on the subject that post-dates the original plan which was hatched sometime in june, i believe. i have also been unable to find any footage of the event, despite the ease of viewing claimed by NASA, as well as their own live internet video feed, the only copy of which i found here. this terrible copy is nothing more than some person filming their computer screen with a camcorder that they did not think they should at least set down on a table or a stack of books, or for the love of god anything that would stabilize the picture! and the audio is muddled up by this person's heavy breathing and loud crunching of what i assume are some sort of fried snacks, proving that the only people interested in watching NASA missions (even the ones where they blow up the moon) are people who are up all night masturbating to internet porn and eating cheetos. this video shows approximately bupkiss, and then cuts to a NASA control room feed in which, immediately after the impact is declared a success, the "rocket scientists" exchange some unenthusiastic high fives, pack up their shit, and go home. the video then cuts to a round table discussion in which a mulleted man is asked for his opinion on the mission. and these are the people we trust to blow up the moon?

and for what?

to discover whether or not the water that the indian lunar mission chandrayaan-1 (as well as two others, none of which actually had to blow anything up) had already discovered is really and truly there?

some are saying this is a vital mission because if we can prove (for the fourth time) that there is water on the moon, we can gain some insight into whether or not there is water on mercury (which we have already discovered, there is). some say that the news that one ton of moon soil contains almost a quart of water (which we knew well in advance of bombing the moon) is a boon for the advancement of space exploration missions. this boon comes by way of a water source for people who need to stop off at the moon, or just want to hang out up there, or for the production of additional rocket fuel (i am not so much amazed as appalled that we are apparently willing to displace the amount of soil it would take to sustain human life for any length of time, let alone refuel a space shuttle, which i assume will need to be gassed up for a mars mission, at the very least).

all of these excuses to bomb the moon for information we already have, information which, now that we have it, brings literally nothing enriching to our lives or our society at all, are completely useless bullshit, and nothing more.

i may point out that the most enthusiastic media outlet in regards to this mission is rightpundits.com, who gushed with such literary marvels as, "isn't that awesome?" and "how cool is that?". even the NASA flight director's blog hasn't been updated since yesterday. i guess the mission couldn't have been all that exciting, if it didn't even warrant a fucking tweet from the guy who was in charge of the damn thing. he couldn't even delegate 160 characters to some intern?

now, far be it from me to be a freaky scare tactic god-bless-american, but we can't just go flying a couple bits of aerospace machinery into some shit that doesn't belong to us, and blowing it up. last time someone did that to us america the beautiful replaced take me out to the ballgame during 7th inning stretches, if you know what i mean.

this whole pointless space debacle is, to me, the best argument yet for the UN to get together and... and... for the UN...

i'm sorry, i am just laughing my ass off at the thought of the UN getting together and accomplishing anything binding and effective.

one moment...

this is the best argument yet for a coalition to begin protecting international, and interstellar territory. i think it is great that we have things like national parks, i truly do, but i believe even more strongly that we should not be demarcating small natural oases and edens within the rest of the universe that we are apparently allowed to fuck up and shit all over. instead, the entire natural universe should be considered sacred ground (in a non-religious sense) and the places we are allowed to fuck up and shit all over should be small demarcated zones of civilization and industry within the beautiful natural world.

of course that will never happen so long as we humans consider ourselves, and our needs to be the alpha and omega purposes for the existence of the universe in the first place.

so let's start small. how about we first consider disbanding NASA, and its wallet draining, morale killing, waste of outer space projects, which are clearly of no redeeming interest to any one but self gratifying basement dwellers, and NASA rocket scientists (you know what? let's not even draw a distinction between the two). i think they themselves have made a telling admission by calling this latest mission LCROSS (which they smartly pronounce "el cross") which is a french canadian slang term (when pronounced "la crosse") for masturbation.

which is exactly what NASA has become.

a very expensive practice in scientific masturbation.

mourez, la crosse!