“Well crap…they discovered our secret ice stash! Better go get the lasers!”
Reading the morning paper this morning, as I am apt to do, and I read more about the Mars probe “The Phoenix”. Apparently it has found ice on the polar region of Mars. I guess this is very exciting to those at NASA who have spent a whole lot of moolah (over $400 million) to get the probe there. And I guess I should be excited also…but I’m not.
If they had found little green men with lasers strapped to their backs, THAT would have been cool! Or even maybe say something like a palm tree growing in the middle of one of Mars’ vast deserts. THAT might have been interesting also. Or possibly a big, giant rock that was made of diamonds…now THAT would have been awesome! Or how about if the probe landed and broke through the surface of Mars to discover a gigantic lake of natural oil! THAT would have been really neato and it would have solved our energy crisis here on earth (of course, we would have had to figure out some way to build a giant pipleline to Mars from here, which would have been pretty expensive and would have shot our funding to the “No Student Left Behind” program. Well…something’s gotta give…right?). But instead they found ice. In the polar region. On a planet thousands of miles away.
I don’t get it. For $400 million plus, they could have used that money to do something a little more productive here on earth! I’m trying to figure out what it is we are trying to accomplish here. I mean, are we looking to populate Mars sometime in the distant future? Have we given up on our little planet here and deciding to move forward and go destroy another planet? Or are we just soooo curious to life outside of our own that we find it necessary to spend $400 million smackers to go discover ice?
WHAT ARE WE DOING PEOPLE??? $400 MILLION??? FOR ICE???
Hell…I can go down to the Quickee Mart here and get ya a bag of ice for $3! WTF?!?!?!
Little green men I’m all for learning about for 400 big ones. Ice? Not so much.
A Round World Through Square Glasses 
Oh, I am so with you on this one! That is a lot of f-ing cash to blow. I mean, jeez, let’s help out our own planet with all that cash, and then when we seem to have extra money, oh, I don’t know…GROWING ON TREES!…let’s go ahead and look for some damn ice on mars. jeez.
Ain’t that ridiculous? Just stupid if you ask me!
Hey. Some day ice will be as expensive as gas and we will be happy to have found an extra place to steal some from.
Mars could be used as a refueling station to farther space targets, and as all of your readers know…H2O can be broken into liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen, or fuel. Also, water is the keystone to carbon based life forms. Ice on Mars opens possibilities that may be needed someday to save our species. But, whatever… it’s crap 400 million wasn’t spent on new tanks or something.