America Back On The Moon?

It almost seems trivial to be discussing space exploration at this point in American history, but I guess I must agree that we must keep on reaching for the America of tomorrow.

How else are we going to one day unite the world under the People’s Democratic Republic of the United States of the World? How many stars are on that flag?

I’m OK at looking towards space again as long as enough government is still working to keep us safe from terrorism before we are forced to divert those resources into figuring out how to defend ourselves from the subterranean Martians that we are going to piss off one day by landing on their planet.

First and foremost, despite the tragedies of 1986 and 2003, a push back to the moon, then on to Mars will most-likely result in the retiring of our space shuttles. As someone who grew up and aged with them, I will be sad to see the shuttles go, but we all know that they have outlived their mission.

The shuttles represent so much of the America that I grew up in...the America that finally defeated the Soviets and won the Cold War. As we bid farewell to our old work-horses, we will then need to decide if we launch our next round of moon missions direct from Earth or from the International Space Station. Will we see a new shuttle-like craft for transporting people and cargo to the space station? Will we see a new generation of Saturn 5-style rockets, or will we see both?

Either way, the best experts agree that for the sheer sake of technological advancements and the continually falling cost of that technology, man will be back on the moon within 15 years.

They say we will build a moon colony this time around and will have the technology for permanent residence on the moon. Yet another pristine, virtually untouched planet for us to litter with empty potato chip bags!

Once we have established our moon base, it will be time then to look to Mars, which these same experts say man will step foot on in about 25 to 30 years. I truly would love to see man on Mars before the end of my lifetime, but I must admit that I wonder how it will fit into our ever-changing lives here on Earth and which of man’s weaknesses and political and ethical quandaries will follow us up into the stars...who am I kidding? We all know that it will be all of them.

So, here is to empty Doritos bags littering the Martian countryside because, at least, as William Burrows pointed out in the WSJ, we will have spare humans on other worlds so that humans will survive when we finally destroy the Earth.

So, now that we have the pipe dream in place and can rest assured that we will not need to divvy up the surface of the moon with the evil Soviet empire this time around, how in the world are we going to pay for all of this? Well, that’s what they said before we went to the moon the first time and we managed to pay that bill off.

Sure, it’s a little more costly than the President flying on to the deck of an aircraft carrier, but that was pretty cool, and it sure did piss a lot of people off, and this is going to be really cool and the $1 trillion price tag of getting us to Mars is really really going to piss a lot of people off...We’ll just have to sit back, keep paying our taxes, and see what happens.

Saving At Its Worst...

At this point in the economic game, any American who actually manages to save some money should be praised, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

A Pennsylvania man that was not named by The Week Magazine, most likely so he wouldn’t be bombarded with calls from financial planners, recently walked into a bank with 37 4 1/2 gallon buckets filled with pennies he had accumulated over 40 years.

The pennies totaled $10,060. Putting $10K away over 40 years is not extraordinary, but with more Americans not saving anything at all, it’s not too bad.

My problem, however, is that if this guy had started putting the $251.50 he was averaging per year in pennies into an investment that returned even 5% per year, he’d have $20,252 instead of $10,060, even after paying taxes.

Putting these pennies in buckets instead of investing them was a monumental mistake.

“Some people don’t think pennies add up to anything,” this man’s wife was quoted as saying.

I’d love to have seen the look on her proud face when she found out that an annual trip to the bank with these pennies could have doubled their money.