September 10, 2004
PUT THE TOY AWAY BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELF, SON (via Eugene S.):
Space cowboys (John O'Farrell, September 10, 2004, The Guardian)
On Wednesday, Nasa scientists watched in shock as their Genesis solar project ended in disaster. "I can't believe it" they all said. "A space mission that went wrong? This is completely unprecedented. I mean, the last time a major space project ended in embarrassing failure was way, way back in January when our Mars rover broke down, and then before that the Beagle 2 project lost contact with its probe, oh and then there was last year's Columbia disaster, oh and the Hubble Telescope fiasco, but apart from that our record is very impressive." From now on Nasa is going to launch its rockets on the 4th of July, just so that everyone thinks they're meant to explode. [...]The so-called Genesis project received its massive funding before they realised that it had nothing to do with taking Phil Collins into deep space. In fact, the naming of the craft is not without an irony of its own, since the purpose of this trip was to inform us about the origins of our solar system. Yet the president who is paying for it all has passed an education bill allowing creationism to creep back into American schools. Why does he need to spend millions on the space probe, to find out what he says Americans can read in the Book of Genesis? Could it be that he's only claiming to take the Bible at face value in order to secure votes in America's bible belt? Or maybe they just told him that with all that fire coming off the sun there must be some oil in there somewhere?
With the tide of Christian fundamentalism that is increasingly directing scientific funding in America, soon Nasa won't be able to send out any more probes unless they are looking for a big bloke with a white beard sitting on a cloud surrounded by angels. But though their latest mission has ended in disaster, maybe this week Nasa just settled the science versus religion debate for once and for all. A huge lump of metal comes flying out of the sky at 200mph, crash lands in the United States, but it completely misses President George W Bush. Clearly there is no God; what more proof does anyone need?
Never mind the snide tone with which this mcgreevey speaks of an administration which is sending men to Mars--when did the first non-American walk on the moon?--does the man have no sense of hubris? By the "logic" he ends with isn't it instructive that a science project claiming to find genesis in a mere star was swatted down like a gnat? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 10, 2004 9:29 AM
The pictures of the space capsule split apart, half buried in the Utah mud, with a trickle of fluid coming out of its side, are some of the most doleful in the annals of science.
A plucky little scout,
You braved the cold of darkest space,
You let yourself be bathed in gamma rays,
And never faltered, not until the very end.
"Rejoice, we conquer," and thus you stumbled, fell
Across the finish line,
Dispatch from battle torn and rent,
Between your teeth as you exhaled your last.
Short days ago, you lived,
And now you lie, beneath the microscope.
A dent de l'ion found its aim;Posted by: Eugene S. at September 10, 2004 10:49 AM
It pierced you mortally.
If we who sent ye break the faith
Let us be cursed, though stardust blows in Utah flats.
The British chattering classes would have to consume red meat, Bordeaux, steroids, and pure testosterone non-stop for about a year in order to be manly enough to be called 'effete.'
The Euros have ceased trying anything, preferring to sit on the sidelines and complain when other more serious places actually look around the world and try to change the things that are wrong or try to engage in exploration. Whether it is the War on Terrorism, space exploration, cutting-edge technology, the Euros fall further behind real countries every day. It is time for us to cease caring. We should say to the girlyman nations of Old Europe, 'Send us your technies, your nerds, your math geeks yearning to breathe free and make a buck without being regulated and nay-sayed into diffidence and early retirement.' Let's just open the border to Euro-nerds and watch their economies collapse and ours skyrocket.
Posted by: Bart at September 10, 2004 11:34 AM"I mean, the last time a major space project ended in embarrassing failure was way, way back in January when our Mars rover broke down..."
That was the same one we fixed, and is still operating, isn't it?
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at September 10, 2004 11:44 AMThe Beagle Mars lander was a UK project that was hitching a ride on the ESA Mars orbiter. It had nothing to do with NASA or the US.
What a putz.
Gentlemen, I know, it's Awful Poetry (apologies to Pheidippides and Maj. McCrae), but "dent de l'ion" is deranged and demented if I do say so myself.
G'nee-hee-heee-mwah-hah-hah-hah!!!
Posted by: Eugene S. at September 10, 2004 12:17 PM