Vacation On the Government!

Where to land on your mars vacation

But...bring your mittens!

One of my students came in this morning wearing a T-shirt, two ssweatshirts, a warmup jacket and a windbreaker. She claimed that it was cold outside. Please, have we gotten soft? Back in the day when I was walking five miles to school in a blizzard...well, never mind. Fact was, it was not all that cold: the pond I ride by on my bike every day didn't even have ice on it! Maybe my comment about her looking like the Goodyear mascot will have some effect. It's not like it's -100C like it is on Mars today.
By way of information, the Phoenix which landed on Mars in May has stopped transmitting data about the planet. It was launched in August of 2007, and arrived in May of 2008 and havs been sending back critical data such as the fact that there is ice on Mars (noted in photo). This, of course, means that Mars has water and could support life as we know it. The Phoenix also recorded snowfall for those of you keeping score. "So, why is this important?" I hear you ask. Well, somebody has to get up there and fix it or bring it back. Those probes aren't cheap, and it's probably just that the batteries went dead on the solar panels because, well, it's getting to be -100 degrees celcius there. We have left far too much expensive stuff in space, and it's about time we get down to reusing and recycling stuff. If the rich are going to have to take a tax increase, I think the rest of us should do our share. Let's go get Phoenix! Who's with me? We could have our 15 minutes of fame without being named "Joe Something." Just think of it.
Why us? It's obvious: we live in Wisconsin, we have a good work ethic, and we are a blue state (maybe from being outside too long) so we're always up for stuff like this. It's right down our alley (never mind that the National Bowling Congress moved its office out of Milwaukee to Texas). Anyway, think of the money we could save: two years of traveling and eating on the government would save us a bundle of gas, heating oil, food and taxes. We would probably get paid as well, and the thing has to be worth millions in scrap metal alone! AND there would be no charge for extra bags, either.
Never mind that in 1999 the Climate Orbiter crashed into the surface because NASA engineers mixed up the numbers of metric calculation with the numbers of English calculation...hey, anybody could get that wrong. Fortunately, the government budget for such things is limitless so we could hire some fifth-graders to do the math for us. It's foolproof.
I'm signing up. You can, too. go to www.change.gov and present yourself as an agent of change for our future. I did. I'm sure I'll be hearing something soon.