Goin' to Mars?

Goin’ to Mars?

It has kind of an adventurous ring to it don’t it? I mean, takin’ a one way trip to a planet that’s a gazillion miles away to live in a fabricated community, never to return to earth. Well I guess it must be attractive to some folks, ‘cause they’re signin’ up for it left, right, an’ center awlready. They prolly think they’re goin’ to be in a star wars movie. Gives a whole new meanin’ to “Beam me up Scotty”. Only thing is you just get only one beam up. There ain’t no beamin’ back neither. That of course gives rise to another thing I saw this mornin’, bein’: “There’s eight planets in our solar system an’ all the idiots are livin’ on mine.”, but that’s another story altogether.

What I was drivin’ at here was the fact that the weather on Mars is so hostile that you can’t even go outside there for fear of bein’ flash frozen just outside yer door. An’ who knows what kind of air you can breathe there anyways? An’ water? Well they say there used to be water there an’ maybe there still is somewheres underground. That sounds like a pretty big gamble to me.

All of this comes with a cost of course. As of 2012, it was about two and a half billion dollars. That’s two years ago an’ since then India has also launched a rocket to go to Mars, so there’s even more cost, an this is just the start o’ things. It almost seems that the greater the cost, the more important the mission, (if that makes any sense).

I’m sure it will come as a great shock to the people involved in this Mars mission to discover that there is already a place right here on earth that meets most of their criteria. It’s called Antarctica an’ it’s a whole dad blamed continent, uninhabited except for a few researchers here an’ there. There’s fourteen million square miles of solid ground (under the ice) to walk on, an’ there’s air to breathe there too. Not only that, but it also has ninety percent of the world’s fresh water supply right there. They even got return trips at certain times o’ the year. That’s got to be a bonus! 

Oh, wait! Maybe that’s it. Maybe they don’t wanna come back. Maybe they just want an adventure, or maybe they wanna get away from everybody an’ everythin’ else. An money ain’t no object neither. It’s not like they’re gonna need it to buy groceries or gas or go to a nightclub, that’s for sure. An’ why leave it to the kids anyways? They’d just piddle it away on groceries an’ gas an’ nightclubs.

An for the investors in these sophisticated transport systems, they’ve already presold their rides on the bus to Mars, so they ain’t out anythin’. In fact, they figure they need about a million people to go up there for the planet to become self-sustaining so they got their futures mapped out.

Well what are we to make of all this? Nothing really. That’s just human nature. We been doin’ that since we first got booted outta the garden of Eden. We’re so busy lookin’ after our own wants an’ desires, we don’t give a rip about anybody else. It’s the prime example of the self over the community. That’s our civilization. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.