Today, it's Outer Space

While I'd like to take the opportunity to blame the beautiful weather, visiting friends, and general excitement that all my TV shows are back on the air after a weird mid-season hiatus, I feel like I do a lot of apologizing for the fact that really, I'm lazy and sometimes so rage-filled that it's hard for me to narrow down which of my daily annoyances I'm going to write about. And I think we all know just how much I hate apologizing for anything, so we'll go ahead and skip the pretenses and I'll pretend that my last update was yesterday, and you'll shut your damn mouth.

Anyway, today, at first, I thought I'd direct my wrath at Republicans in general - and specifically Texans (who, in fact, represent all that is wrong with this country. I'm not sure if you knew that or not):

 

but then I realized that the Healthcare bill hasn't officially gone into effect yet, so I can't really afford to have an aneurysm right now, since with the horrific insurance I do have, I might as well not have any. But don't fret, because this post is still going to indirectly relate to Healthcare (I know how worried you were), thus making it relevant and current!

So.

Speaking of relevancy and currency, today's post is about something that gets a massive portion of our country's budget, yet fails to produce anything remotely useful other than theories and a general sense of, "Well...we think this means...":

Here are some fun facts I'll bet you (probably) didn't know. For example:

1.  Nasa's motto is "For the benefit of all."
2. Their mission statement is "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research."
3. Their annual budget is 17.6 BILLION dollars.
   
   *BTW, all of this info is courtesy of Wikipedia. Because if I'm too lazy to actually write a blog about how angry I am, you didn't think I'd really research Nasa crap did you?

So, in reading the outpouring of Facebook rage over a national Healthcare plan and the possibility of rising taxes, I got to thinking: 

Q: "Molly, what is one thing our government funds that's kind of a waste of money?"

A: "Well, it's certainly not the $25 BILLION in farm subsidies so farmers can grow preposterous amounts of Corn and poison our country with high fructose corn syrup. Hell no! How else would I rot my teeth and pickle my insides?" (BTW, if you haven't seen King Corn, put that on your Netflix Queue next to Fast Food Nation and Food, Inc.)

But one night, while watching a particularly horrifying movie about alien abductions (It was The Fourth Kind, and while it wasn't really all that good or scary, Aliens do happen to be one of my biggest fears in life), I came to the conclusion that "Space is stupid."

And there you have it: 

 I really hate space more than anything else right now.

Here's the thing - I don't really have a problem with NASA, per se. But what I do have a problem with is the fact that they're sending rockets up monthly, for no other reason than, "Well, we've got some satellites to put up," or, "Well, we've got to test weightless environments again," or, "Well, that super-expensive telescope that keeps breaking broke again." But really, what it boils down to is, "Well, we've got an annual budget that if we don't use it, we lose it, so...rockets away!"

BTW, doesn't that look like a big 'ole dick rising from a nest of pubes?

I once read a Dan Brown book (Oh God, I fell like nothing good/reputable ever comes from that sentence. EVER) called Deception Point where essentially the whole plot of the story centers around the fact that NASA is faking its findings to continue to justify its absolutely absurd budget. (Except it was much longer, and much more annoying than my brief summary.) Oh, and Spoiler Alert!

And while I'm not actually coming right out and saying that NASA does that (so take that, Libel lawyers), I think there could be a very good argument in the vein of "So What, Who Cares?":

when it comes to the fact that Pluto is not really a planet. I mean, seriously - finding out that it wasn't a planet really didn't affect my world in the least, because guess what? WE WEREN'T EVER GOING TO MAKE IT TO PLUTO ANYWAY!

Likewise, the only thing I want to know about finding more water on Earth's moon is when we're going to get our asses up there and put some wells in. Seriously though - I'm not against BEING in space. I'm firmly anti-FARTING AROUND in space. 

Why make moon landings if we're not going to start building a colony there? (Seriously, why AREN'T we building a colony on the moon? Fear of aliens notwithstanding, I'd totally go live there and mine Unobtanium. 

 What? Wrong planet?

Why keep launching rockets into space at roughly $60 million a pop? (again, thanks Wikipedia!) -and ooh! Another fun fact: that's only to get the rocket into space. That doesn't take into account actually GOING/LANDING anywhere!

There's definitely an argument that a lot of the shuttle launches afford scientists experimental luxuries they can't experience on Earth. Fair enough, but you mean to tell me we can't replicate space on Earth, even though we can simulate what it's like to land on Mars in a theme park?

I mean, shit! For all intents and purposes, Gary Sinise knows more about landing a shuttle on Mars than most astronauts! I just don't buy it. I don't think that I agree that what we're "learning" in space is as important as what we should be learning here on our own planet.

So, much like a NASA rocket launch budget, I'm spent. To sum up this whole post, the only things that should be floating in space are satellites, telescopes, and garbage. Not astronauts showing off their fancy spacewalks (which, in my mind, I often liken to be a cakewalk for some reason. Who'll win the moonpie?). Let the satellite companies pay the full amount to get their satellites into space. Quit sending up shitty telescopes that cost a fuckton of money and don't work half the time. And perhaps we want to go ahead and rethink our "space landfill" idea. Save that for Garbage Island, aka the Pacific Trash Vortex, floating around somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. 

(BTW, you really want to blow your mind, just read about that human fuckup here. Nothin' like a big ole trash heap the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean to really skullfuck you.)

So if NASA really IS "for the benefit of all," how's about they earmark some of their redonkulous budget to funding our new and improved National Healthcare System! Because quite frankly, I can think of a lot of ways they can carry out their mission statement here on Earth (and I'm not even a rocket scientist!  Bazinga)

In closing, I think there are plenty of more important space-related things we could be doing on Earth. For example, how ready are we for an inevitable alien invasion? Do we have provisions in place? Because there's nothing I hate more than aliens strollin' across my video screen when I'm trying to tape my niece's birthday party in Mexico.