Look, Mitch … you don’t have to solve every problem with explosions. I know that cuts against the grain a bit, but at least try …. TRY not to dial it up to eleven every time you feel slighted. Thank you! Good day, sir!
Jesus Christ on a bike. If you want anything done around here, you have to talk until you’re green in the face. (That’s probably how we ended up with the name Big Green, but I digress.) As I mentioned in passing last week, we are contemplating a little trip out into the nether regions of the solar system – not the most desirable area, it’s true, but you have to book where they’ll have you, right? Isn’t that the first lesson of the music trade? Or maybe the second. The first is, play on, no matter what happens. Even if they set your banjo on fire, keep plucking. Then comes the bit about bookings. With me?
Okay, so our plan was to fly out to KIC 8462852 with a brief stop at the as yet undiscovered Dwarf Planet at the edge of our solar system (and perhaps the hidden giant world lurking just beyond). We think we have a line on a spacecraft from the cheap-ass carrier SpaceY, who will lease us a Plywood 9000 rocket … kind of an interstellar panel van, if you will. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has been handling the negotiations. He has also been running some tests on the surface of Mars to see if this might be a good time to try out his patented new gravitational field hyper drive module. The thing looks like a water cooler, in all honesty. Only thing is, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is the only one among us who can drink out of it safely.
Here’s the rub. The European space probe Schiaparelli appeared to have crashed during its attempt to land on Mars this past week. I think the truth is, Mitch may have taken it down. They were getting a little too close to his clandestine operation on the red planet, and he didn’t want to take the chance of being discovered. I keep telling him it’s inappropriate to break things, but the man is a child … one who plays with killer technologies, no less. He won’t ‘fess up, but this happens a bit too often to be an accident.
God damn it, if we’re going to fly out of here on a Plywood 9000 space probe, I want to be on the right side of the European Space Agency. Unless we intend on doing a tour of continental jails.
So whereas SpaceX has the famed “Falcon 9” rocket with the patented “Dragon” spacecraft, SpaceY offers the not-so-well-known “Plywood 9000” rocket powering its nearly designed (and no, that’s not a typo: it hasn’t been designed yet) “Malaysian Tapir 9000” spacecraft. (They seem to like the number 9000. That would explain their requested down payment.) I know what you’re thinking …. this doesn’t sound like it meets the reliability standard I set forward in the previous paragraph. My only rejoinder to that is, well … that was more than a paragraph ago. Are you going to hold me to EVERYTHING I’ve said in the past? How about gurgling noises I made as an infant – do you plan to hit me with those, too?
That of course puts us back into the spacecraft rental market. Never a good place to be, especially in this economy and with the election coming up. It’s just hard to get a low parsec ion-drive ship that can hold more than a couple of vertically challenged astronauts. We not only have our own asses, but an entourage and a whole load of equipment. (If the mansized tuber accompanies us, as he has threatened to do, we will need a greenhouse on board as well.) We’re considering a kickstarter campaign, frankly. Either that or hiring a grant writer. (Isn’t that just a fancy term for counterfeiting? If so, why the hell doesn’t Mitch just invent some freaking money for a change.)