In the long history of outrageous government waste, the Washington Post reports from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the following new exhibit for the Hall of Shame. The Post reports:
“With back-to-back rocket launchings next month, NASA hopes to revive its Mars exploration program – and burnish its battered image – with an ambitious $800-million mission …”
And what is the purpose of this mission, which will cost us taxpayers more than three-fourths of a billion dollars?
Well, are you sitting down? They actually intend to spend all this money on – And this a quote: “To figure out what happened to the water that scientists think once scoured the planet’s surface”!
Why on earth is this interplanetary $800-million expenditure necessary?
Post reporter William Harwood’s half-page story provides only the following goals:
- “Like tourists everywhere they’ll take scores of ‘I was there!’ snapshots using stereoscopic cameras atop a rotating mast to capture the kind of panoramas that riveted the world during the Pathfinder mission.” (Comment: Was the whole world – 7 billion people – really all riveted by that Mars panorama?)
- “Twice each afternoon as two NASA satellites already in orbit around Mars pass overhead, the rovers will beam up a treasure trove of data.” (Comment: None of which is specified.)
- “Then as the distant sun finally sets, the solar-powered rovers will hunker down, awaiting fresh instructions the next morning as to which rock the scientists want to look under next.” (Comment: How absolutely thrilling! Your income tax, paid last month, could be entirely spent on this $800 million Mars rock hunt, including looking under those rocks the scientists want to look under next!)
There is however the following Washington Post warning:
“The program’s goals are hardly child’s play. Coming on the heels of two devastating Mars failures in 1999 and the Columbia shuttle disaster earlier this year, NASA is under intense pressure to pull off a success.
“Two in fact. And both are critical links in a chain of increasingly ambitious missions designed to figure out once and for all whether life ever evolved on the fourth planet from the sun.”
Ladies and gentlemen: Who really gives one hoot in hell whether life ever evolved on the fourth planet from the sun? There is surely no sign of life on Mars now. And why should anybody besides these enormously expensive scientists care?
Aren’t there a lot more taxpayers who are vitally interested in another area: locating the UFOs whom they claim come and regularly visit us?
And if we’re going to spend $800 million on Mars rock hunts, when will NASA propose a $1 trillion expedition to overturn rocks on Pluto?
