Nasa recently started making some noise about sending a manned mission to mars. This might be old news to some folks, but since this is the first really cool thing Nasa has planned to do in almost 40 years I think we can stay excited for more than a month or two. No, blowing up shuttles full of astronauts is not cool.

The BBC article in the link makes it pretty clear that the plan is in its infancy and will probably change quite a bit before go time, but it does make a couple things obvious no matter what plan is used.

1. The astronauts’ trip is going to take a long time
2. There are approximately 5 billion things that can go wrong during that time.

Based on what I have gleaned about the mission from my research, (3 minutes skimming the BBC article followed by playing DOOM 3 for a couple hours) I have concluded just how the mission will end. Look into my crystal ball and tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing:

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for a revitalized space program with some real kick-ass goals. Its about time we shot another group of American heroes into the vacuum of space to either immortalize them or burn them up in our atmosphere. Enough of these pansy rovers that keel over at the first puff of dust. I want a square jawed beef eatin’ midwesterner with a look of steely determination in his eyes and calluses half an inch thick on his hands.

The only thing is Nasa’s track record when dealing with squishy bags of bones and organs isn’t too great, especially recently. Besides that it is estimated to cost from $20 to $450 billion which puts the actual price around at least $80 gagillion.

These are minor speed bumps that have never stopped us before however, and it really all comes into focus when you realize just how much we NEED to go to Mars. Have you seen those movies with the sinister aliens who reach across the cosmos to strip a world bare of resources because their home planet has long ago been reduced to a used up trash heap. THAT’S US! We better get to mining that sweet red Martian soil before someone else gets to it. Also we need these kind of purely scientific endeavors if we are ever going to develop phaser technology. This is very important. If I die without getting to vaporize the idiots who cut me off in traffic I am going to be very pissed.

In conclusion, this manned mission is going to end up exactly like that one movie about that rock face on mars with the dust storms and the people dying and I couldn’t be happier.

-Andy