Going to the Moon 2026

Yesterday Nasa’s giant new moon rocket crept from the Kennedy Space Center Aseembly building at dawn at 1 MPH, hardly rocket launch speed to escape the Earth's orbit. At turtle speed the Artmeis II reached the launch pad at nightfall. Sometime in February barring any foreseeable interference from 47 like egotistically renaming the Space Center after himself as he had the nation's performance center in Washington, the Artemis II will carry a lunar vehicle beyond the upper reaches of Earth's gravity to the Moon, the first such voyage since Richard Nixon defunded the Apollo mission in 1972 in favor of orbit missions. Ricahrd Nixon truly believed that the USA landed on the Mooon and he spoke to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the White House on July 20, 1969. Almost 700 million people worldwide witnessed the Lunar accomplishment or nearly one-fifth of humanity. I don't recall having seen it.

I believed mankind stepped the moon and the bootprints from all the successful Apollo mission might have survived our long absence from the our pale companion through the cosmos.

I am genuinely glad that NASA has committed to renewing our exploration of the great unknown.

Maybe this time I will watch the launch.

And with excitement.

Next year Andromeda.

As my old biker friend Eddie Mikey said back in 1971, "Why the shit gets a foot high, step a foot higher."

And it's knee high under 47. The trans Orange Messiah.

The moon landing July 20, 1969.

The Mission Ahead - 2012

Cape Kennedy was the epicenter of America's Space Race with the USSR. The triumphs of Alan Shephard piloting a Mercury-Redstone 15 on a sub-orbital voyage and Apollo 11 moon landing originated on its launch pads as well as the tragedies of the Challenger and Columbia. NASA shut down the space shuttles last year and last February I visited Cape Kennedy in Florida. The space port has basically been turned into a tourist site, as the US government has abnegated their commitment to the stars in favor of private investors running our space mission, reminding me of the Ming Dynasty banning exploration at the return of Zhung He's treasure fleet in 1433, however the 8/6 Mars landing of the rover Curiosity shows we ain't done yet and on August 23 Nasa has a scheduled launch to space.

In the meanwhile if you have a chance, visit the Space Center at Cape Kennedy.

It gets five stars from me, then again I'm a Trekkie.

Live long and prosper.

ps I got a senior discount at the Space Center. My first, but certainty far from my last. I was sixty. So much younger then , I'm older than that now.

Mars Versus Mount Washington

The atmosphere on Mars is a hundred times thinner than that of Earth.

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover has measured summer temperatures as high as 70 Fahrenheit or 20 Centigrade at the Red Planet's equator, but as soon as the sun sets, the temperature can plummet to -100 F and -175F is not usual in the winter months at the fourth planet's pole.

Bcck in 2017 the daytime high at Mars' Gale Crater as recorded by NASA's curiosity Rover, was 17.6 degrees F or about the reading on the thermometer outside the window in Fort Lee, NJ .

Mount Washington hit -100 with the wind chill and Old Agiocochook came close to beating the lowest natural temperature of −128.6 °F at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

There is no way to calculate the wind chill on Mars.

Just life-threatening cold.

Same as on Agiocochook, but people live there.

Weather men, because Mount Washington breeds weather.

A lot of it.

One day we will be on Mars.

Dogs too.

Like there are dogs on Mount Washington.

In Heaven Above

Back in Paris during the 1980s some of my friends were involved in fashion. World-class Claude Montana and Azzedine Alaïa invited me to their pret-de-porter shows and I was lucky enough to have known the most beautiful women in the world. Few were more exotic than Marpessa.

Half-Dutch and half-Surinam, her beauty was frightening, but in 1984 I invited her to a dinner at the infamous Chez Dave on Rue St. Roch with the infamous art dealer Vonelli by saying that we wanted to exploit her beauty for NASA. Candida and Bridget were away on photo shoots. Both of us were safe to be with one of their modelling rivals. We knew better than to try anything funny.

"NASA?" asked the cinnamon-skinned mannequin in her sleek Azzidine cat suit and I forgave her benign ignorance, since Man hadn't stepped on the Moon for over a decade. "They want me to go to Space."

"NASA sends rockets into Space from Florida. Vonelli is from there. He knows people."

In truth no one knew what Vonelli did. Rumors said CIA. I didn't know, but no one ever said different.

"From Miami Beach?" Marpessa regarded us with an accusatory stare. She was used to hearing bullshit.

"Close, but a little farther to the north." Vonelli had abandoned his family lucrative Fort Meyers seed business in 1966 to pursue a career as a piano player in London. Many people in Paris thought he was CIA. They thought the same of me. "But I've been contacted by Mission Control to find the most beautiful woman in Paris.

"Why?"

"Because NASA is broke and they are holding a lottery to see who will be the first man to have sex in Space," Vonelli explained to the exotic half Indonesisan-Dutch twenty year-old over a plate of Dave's famous BBQ ribs. His hummorous spiel cast a spell of trajectories, cosmic rays, G forces, and weightlessness.

"Why me?" asked Marpessa.

I sucked the meat off a bone like the caveman in Kubrick's film 2001 and said, "And why you? The head of NASA saw your photo on the cover of Vogue and said this woman could launch a Space Shuttle."

"C'est Vrai?" the Azzedine Alaia cabine model spoke four languages and a fifth was saved for her lovers.

"Absolutelment." Vonelli was in his prime. He looked 50% MI-5 in his Sixties Savile Road suit and Swining London was well remembered in Europe.

"Your face will grace posters across the globe. One night with Marpessa. $1."

"$1? The whores on Rue Std. Denis get 500 francs."

Millionaires would have halved their fortune for a single night in the glow of her dusky beauty and destitute Paris artists would have bathed clean to paint her nude.

"Times one billion people. We will make you rich." I couldn't believe she was buying our hooey, but Vonelli dropped a card on the table. It was only partially stained by BBQ sauce. "We will guarantee you $10 million for your efforts."

"And I'll have to go to Space?" Vonelli and I pingponged a glance.

"Yes." We nodded like a senators okaying a secret assassination. "We call the project IN HEAVEN ABOVE."

"I'll do it."

"Fantastique. You will save NASA."

We toasted our future.

This utopia lasted to the door of Dave's.

"That was a funny story, but I hear many funny stories, but mostly from unfunny men looking to have sex with me and not the someone else."

"So you saw through our story?" asked Vonelli.

"From word one. All men are trying to have their way with me. Promises of money. Lies about their wealth. So many lies, but all stores are true, if interesting or funny like yours, esepecially since you made it up without any practice."

"You saw right through us?" asked Vonelli.

"Like a new shower curtain."

Marpessa hailed a taxi and disappeared into the Paris night.

Vonelli and I repaired back to our table.

Dave, the cloy Chinese owner sat down and hissed, "You two are mean." “And beauty is even meaner.” Vonelli ordered a bottle of bourgogne. We drank it and regaled everyone about IN HEAVEN ABOVE leaving out Marpessa sussing out our tale, then again everyone wanted to believe in a lottery to have sex in Space, because like she said, "All stores are true, if interesting or funny."

Both of us have always wanted that to be true.

In Paris or Outer Space.

In Heaven Above

SWritten 2012

Sir Richard Branson's spaceship THE VIRGIN ENTERPRISE will bring humans to the edge of Space. Its apogee will created a window of weightlessness. The small craft is built for two crew and six passengers, however there must be provisions for those space lovers who want a little privacy in order to become the first people to have sex in Space.

Supposedly US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programs on how human beings might survive years in orbit. The greatest challenge to intercourse is the weightlessness. Astronauts and Cosmonauts alike have failed to achieve erections because the blood pools in their extremities. Pressurization is the key.

IN HEAVEN ABOVE is my tale of a bankrupt ex-Soviet republic threatened by a multi-national conglomerate with extinction. The triumvirate in charge of this nation turn to their mad economist to save the country and he proposed that they repair their decrepit space shuttle and hold a global lottery with the first prize to be a ticket into space to be the first man or woman to have sex. None of the studios clicked on this comedy. Maybe it wasn't funny enough, however a respected French scientific writer claims that sex in space has already been achieved by NASA and Moscow, although in deep secrecy.

NASA's Sex in Freefall program was codenamed STS-XXX and astronauts supposedly computer-tested about 23 sexual positions to divine the most viable in a conditions of no-gravity. They then used guinea pigs and reputedly videotaped the results. Censored except for those White House officials with agricultural training. NASA scientists discovered only 4 positions were possible without help from robots and high-tech equipment.

The missionary position is impossible in space.

You can push up and down when there is none in space.

IN HEAVEN ABOVE coitus galactica was a long languid session of foreplay followed by a drift to heaven among the stars.

NASA never contacted me, but I'm still waiting for the phone to ring.

Not NASA but Virgin.

"Hello, VIRGIN. We have contact."

Starry Nights for UFOs

As a child of the 1960s I lived in the suburbs south of Boston. Summer nights were filled with silence; no cars, no voices, no music. Every house was a tomb and I would steal from the house to our back yard. The grass was shorn short by constant mowing. The stubs were painful to my feet, but I would spread a blanket on the ground, strip off my pajamas and lie on the lawn, looking to the sky.

My soul sought not the mystery of God in the celestial night, but an aberration in the galactic traffic.

"Oh, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me away."

Alien abduction was a better fate than suffering pubescence in the suburbs, yet no flying saucers snatched my body. I was stranded on Earth along with billions of other humans. None of us were going to the stars, for our solar system is located on the most remote edge of the Milky Way.

Think as distant from New York as Great Slave Lake.

Spaceships warp past Earth without deccelerting. Our planet isn't on the Inter-Galactic Guide. A cosmic billboard on the Moon WINE AND DINE AT EARTH might help trade with the passing aliens, however Earthlings are stuck on the planet, especially after President Nixon had NASA abandon a Mars landing, colonization of the Moon, or a permanent orbital station in favor of Space Shuttles.

From that moment on I felt we were alone, despite claims to the contrary by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell that UFOs regularly visit this blue planet and not only the cow-mutilators of Wyoming.

His conversations with old-timers from Roswell strengthened his own experiences in Space and Edgar Mitchell was convinced that NASA and the Pentagon have been vigorously prevented the truth from reaching a public more interested in potato chips than UFOs.

"Is there life outside of Earth?"

The Colonel thought so, although my late father considered billions spent on NASA a waste. He was an electrical engineer. He loved my mother. She only wanted to go to Cape Cod in the summer and that desitnation was good enough for him as well.

"There's nothing out there?"

No go-go bars for sure or romantic lakes or no marching bands.

Tubas take up too much room in a spaceship, although I once saw a tuba on a Star Trek episode.

The former astronaut also says that the three crafts once hovering over Phoenix were not ours. They were from another planet and not Mars either. Someplace much farther away and we can't even estimate that distance with our pea brains, but I no longer want to go to the stars.

I have four kids.

A three loving daughters and two busy boys.

Plus two grandchildren.

Those are my aliens, for ET are us.

Children from future.

Next Year Andromeda

Andromeda is the spiral galaxy 225 million light years away from our star system.

Four billion years from now the two galaxies are predicted to crash together.

None of that will be there to witness that event.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, Marvel Comics came out with a story NEXT YEAR ANDROMEDA.

225 million light-years in one year means a vessel would have to cover over 60,000 light-years a day.

Is that possible?

Not with our technology.

This week Voyager 2 left the solar system.

The NASA space probe was launched in 1977

It has passed Jupiter.

Saturn.

Uranus.

Neptune.

And now into Deep Space.

Joining the other five vessel to achieve departure from the heliosphere.

Most people have no idea of this accomplishment.

Next year Andromeda.

Especially with Julie Chrystie.

The Stars Beyond Our Touch

The stars have obsessed Man throughout our existence on the planet. We have stared at the distant pinpoints of light and asked if anyone was out there. Our ancient ancestors thought the cosmos was the home of the gods, Christians prayed upward to heaven, and modern scientists have mapped the universe with telescopes. Our early ventures into Space were on the nose of rockets.

During the Cold War Russia and the USA raced into Space on those giant firecrackers.

Every rocket was launched in top secrecy and skeptics have continually accused NASA of faking the 1969 Landing on the Moon, but no one doubted the performance the US Space Shuttles blasting off from Cape Kennedy.

Since 1982 the manned spacecraft have lifted from this mortal coil.

Twice the missions ended in disaster. The Challenger exploded on take-off in 1986 and Columbia disintegrated on entry in 2003.

In 2009 the Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center for the final space mission to the International Space Station.

335 astronauts have ridden the Shuttle into orbit. The fleet has clocked over 500,000,000 miles in that time. A long way for Man, but light travels the 93 million miles between the Sun and the Earth in a little more than 8 minutes, so Man is not ready for the stars and many of us stranded on the planet wonder about the future of NASA's space program, especially with NASA touting the efforts of Boeing and the Sierra Nevada Corporation to develop a cheaper version of the Space Shuttle. Several other ventures are financing the corporate race into Space. None are capable of producing a manned orbiter within this decade, leaving Mankind locked on Mother Earth.

The International Space Station will have to be supplied by Russian rockets until the replacement shuttles are ready for Space.

The GOP are hoping on never, because the religious right are convinced that the heavens are for the dead and not the living.

But I'm a Trekkie and Trekkies always believe that when the shit gets a foot high we step a foot higher.

And I believe in the old Space motto, "Next year Andromeda."

But just in case I'm ready to construct my own orbiter powered by two gallons of Mississippi moonshine attached to a lawn chair.

Total outlay $98.

Possible lift-off of 5 feet.

Yes, I do want to be a spaceman.

Tinkering With NASA Tinkle

In 2008 Astronauts on the International Space Station were hard at work repairing the Intergalactic Piss Cleaner. This device was designed to convert urine and sweat into potable water, thereby decreasing the transport loads of the supply rockets. Unfortunately the urine centrifuge was out of whack and the astronauts have been forced to cut down on their water intake.

"The water should be 70% condensation and 30% urine." At present it's 90/10.

Less piss sounds good to me

None sounds even better.

Except to President Trump.

Sex In Space

In 2002 I wrote a screenplay IN HEAVEN ABOVE in which a former Soviet province saved itself from bankruptcy by holding a lottery with the prize of being the first man to have sex in space in their revamped space shuttle. I sent the scenario to a number of film companies. Rejection followed rejection followed rejection.

After an old girlfriend at CAA didn’t return my phone calls and I retired IN HEAVEN ABOVE to my closet with the rest of my unpublished manuscripts. They excelled at collecting dust.

Yet hope sprung, when last month I received a call from a Canadian film director. We knew each other through a mutual friend, who had been his lover. Both were married to other people. Divorce was out of the question, but he had read my script as a favor to her and we met at a Fort Greene wine bar for a quick tete-a-tete.

I saw my name in lights and we sat at a table and I asked, “What you think?”

“It was very funny,” Allyn replied without much interest and then asked, “Is sex in Space possible?”

I signaled the waiter for two wines; white for me, red for Allyn.

He was from Canada.

“According to all the research, no.”

“So no one has had sex in Space?” His time was worth thousands of dollars a minute. He spoke as if every word cost him a thousand dollars.

“No.” I was used to people picking my mind. This was a WOT or a waste of time, but I had ten minutes to spare.

“How can you be certain that no one has not had sex in Space?”

“NASA is too square. In fact NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs of the Johnson Space Center in Houston has said, “We don’t study sexuality in space, and we don’t have any ongoing studies on the possibility, plus astronauts are also very conservative by nature and will do nothing to jeopardize their seat for the next mission.”

I had extensively researched the Internet during the writing of IN HEAVEN ABOVE and knew the subject better than the President, mostly because living presidents other than Bill Clinton first think about death from above rather than sex.

“What about the Russians?” He was speaking with a ‘hurry up’ tone. Script pitches were usually a hundred words or less.

“The Russians have brought up guitars and vodka, but they were probably too drunk for sex.” So no." His pushy voice reminded me why I hated LA.

His clock ticked faster than reality.

"No, I said probably, because the Russians will try anything and they also tried out several sexual positions for sex. One with guinea pigs. That report is censored by the NASA and Russian space authorities.”

“I don’t give a shit about guinea pigs.” Hollywood directors only cared about how much popcorn their movies sold for the producers.

“No, I don’t imagine you would.” I covered my snide tracks with a shovel of information. “Keep this in mind. The biggest challenge of sex in space is Newton’s Third Law.” My teachers at Xaverian Brothers and Boston College had excelled at foisting knowledge to their students. “So if I thrust, a woman is propelled farther from me. Coupling is considered nearly impossible in a weightless environment and scientists haven't come up with a solution?”

“But you have?”

“I was a Math major at university. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Only four positions work in space, but they need help. Are you familiar with the dolphin theory?”

A heart beat of silence revealed his complete ignorance.

“The Ocean is as much Space as Space. Buoyancy is the same as weightlessness and some scientists suggest that dolphin need a third party to help them mate in a near-zero-gravity situation. It always helps to have someone pushing, but also if you were strapped to a wall by Velcro, that might help the lack of gravity.”

"Sort of like a bondage menage a trois?”

“Yes, but the research of sex in Space has been limited by the religious constraints of the fundamentalists and Catholic Church, plus most of space missions have been with men and NASA doesn’t launch gay astronauts. At least none have come out of the closet. Plus there's another problem?"

"Another one?"

"That there isn't enough blood in your cock to achieve erection." Enough men on Earth suffered from penile dysfunction to not have to spread their illness in Space.

"But if you took a Viagra, wouldn't the drug help the flow of blood to the penis?" The director was rich enough to have booked a future flight on Virgin's Space Shuttle.

"I'm not a scientist, plus I never use Viagra or Cialis, since those pills are only to help a man have sex with a woman whom he doesn't want to fuck, but if you google ‘sex in space’, you come up with nothing. It doesn’t interest the scientists and most of space missions have been with men and astronauts are not gay. At least none have come out of the closet.”

"Thanks for the information." He was digging for a story to steal.

I had a million of them.

"What about IN HEAVEN ABOVE?" I was hoping for an advance.

"It's funny and an unusual story, but this is America. No one here is interested in foreigners having sex in Space." He was leaving town this week to film another TV show for HBO.

"Space is not for the angels." This call had been a waste of my time and at my age time was not a luxury.

"And monster aliens. If you come up with a good monster screenplay, give me a call."

Allyn dropped $20 and left the bar for a rendezvous with a woman who wasn't his wife.

He hadn't drank a sip of his red wine.

“Yeah, right." I finished my wine, remembering the price of a celestial space tours offering weddings.

"$2.3 million per person.

A lot of but a honeymoons in orbit can’t be far behind this venture into Space with special suits made for the conjugal passage through the stars. Space hookers will be next, unless we’re heading for Venus, which everyone knows is populated by blue-skinned vixens in fur bikinis and they do it for free.

Same as me letting Allyn pick my brain, but really I cost more than a glass of wine and I drank the rest of Allyn's wine.

I wished it was white, but it was more real than Sex in Space.

At least until I got back to my wife in Thailand.

Mam sends me to the moon.

Half of NASA's 2016 Astronaut Class

NASA announced that half of its 2016 class will be women and that the team will be training for a future Mars mission. This is quite an accomplishment, especially considering the state of NASA's space fleet.

NASA no longer has a Space Shuttle

And neither does Russia.

None featuring women.

Just a unisex mission to Mars.

Then again there's always the Devil Girl from Mars.

And she's trouble on any planet on the solar system.

As if any woman from Mars.

Iceless

NASA scientists have extrapolated an image of an Antarctica minus its thick ice mass. The polar ice cap has been melting over the last century. Even global warming fanatics aren't predicting that outcome, which would result in a 60 meter rise in the Earth's sea levels. One more thing none of the research suggested that there is a hidden world underneath the frozen continent. But the eggheads never saw ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR.

The Danger of Asteroids

Several years ago a NASA spacecraft passed the planet Mercury. A transmitted photo clearly revealed the effect of meteor strikes on the surface. Their impacts of Earth were not so apparent from the Space Shuttle, unless you know where to look like in the Yucatan or polar areas, but most astronomers are more concerned with incoming asteroids or comets as a threat to life on Earth greater than Man.

"Civilization killers" of 1 kilometer, or about 3,300 feet are veering closer and closer to Earth due to the planet's increased magnetic pull. Some have missed our planet by 29.8 million miles or a third the distance to the Sun. Smaller objects can crash into onEarth with various degrees of destruction from not being able to watch TV to the flattening of Kansas and something as small as a semi-trailer could achieve that effect.

NASA has reckoned such events occur once every 300 years, but the odds favor an ocean landing, since Earth is 2/3 water.

One way to defuse this problem would be for Americans to lose weight, since the Earth's gravity pull is directly effected by the mass of the planet. NASA has been warned about the dangers of obesity, now is the time to act before it's too late.

Not only is losing weight for the planet, it's good for you.

I'm cutting down on beer.

Every little bit helps.

Stars And Stars Above

To celebrate its 23rd anniversary, Space Hubble Telescope released a new spectacular image of the Horsehead Nebula, the dark nebula located in the Orion constellation. The large cloud of hydrogen laced with dust is approximately 1500 light years from Earth and its 'height' is about 5 light-years. The molecular cloud, known as a stellar nursery, contains over 100 known organic and inorganic gases as well of dust consisting of large and complex organic molecules.

'This nebula is a very well-known object and a popular target for observations, most of which show the Horsehead as a dark cloud silhouetted against a background of glowing gas. This new image shows the same region in infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than visible light and can pierce through the dusty material that usually obscures the nebula’s inner regions. The result is a rather ethereal and fragile-looking structure, made of delicate folds of gas — very different to the nebula’s appearance in visible light.'

In Heaven Above

Back in the 80s I was invited to fashion shows by Claude Montana and Azzedine Alaïa. My friend were models and designers. Some have become famous and I was lucky enough to have known some of the most beautiful women in the world. Few were more exotic than Marpessa.

She was half-Dutch and half-Indonesia. Her beauty was frightening, but I seduced her into a dinner with the infamous art dealer Vonelli by saying that we wanted to exploit her beauty for NASA.

"Why?"

"Because NASA is broke and they want to hold a lottery to see who will be the first man to have sex in Space," I told her this in Dave's restaurant on Rue St. Roch. His BBQ ribs were exquisite and I piggyback their flavors to bullshit her about Vonelli being a NASA scientist. "He saw your photo on the cover of Vogue and said this woman could launch a Space Shuttle."

"C'est Vrai?" Marpessa spoke four languages and a fifth was saved for her lovers.

"Absolutelment." Vonelli was in his prime. He looked 50% CIA in his Brooks Brothers suit.

"Your face will grace posters across the globe. One night with Marpessa. $1."

"$1?" She usually gave it away from free to French painters.

"Times one billion people. We will make you rich." I couldn't believe she was buying my hooey, but Vonelli dropped a card on the table. It was only partially stained by BBQ sauce. "We will guarantee you $10 million for your efforts."

"And I'll have to go to Space?"

Vonelli and I pingponged a glance.

"Yes." He nodded like a senator okaying a secret assassination. "We call the project IN HEAVEN ABOVE."

"I'll do it."

We toasted our future.

It lasted to the door of Dave's.

Marpessa went her way in a taxi.

Vonelli and I repaired back to our table. Dave sat down and said, "You are mean. I want to wrapped you in Saran Wrap and cover you in Mayonnaise."

Sounds like the perfect Space Suit."

"For Heaven Above." Vonelli pointed skyward to the ceiling.

"You are mean to ignore me."

"And beauty is even meaner." Vonelli ordered a bottle of wine. We drank it regaling everyone about Heaven Above.

Everyone wanted to believe, for when the shit gets a foot high the cool step a foot higher.

No Sleep In Space

NASA conducted the first fly-by of MArs in 1965. The Mariner 4 orbited the Red Planet sending back photos as well as measuring factors of Space for future missions. Communications with the satellite ceased on the winter solstice of 1967, however the US space agency continued to explore the distant planet with unmanned robots. At present five spacecrafts conduct experiments both in space and on the surface of the fourth planet from the Sun. A manned trip planned for 2020 has been pushed back to 2030 by NASA, while MARS ONE, a private space enterprise, announced its intent to land a man on the planet in 2023. Every two years the proximity of Mars and Earth shorten the round-trip journey to 450 days, requiring half the energy of a longer trip. A major challenge to this voyage is the stress on the crew having to live in cramped quarters for over a year and the tedium of never seeming to get anywhere. "The monotony of going to Mars and coming back again is something that will need to be addressed in the future. You don't want your crew hanging around doing nothing," said the man in charge of the mission. The pseudo-astronauts slept even more on the 'return leg' Russian scientists discovered that more than half crew members suffered from insomnia on this trip to nowhere. I know the feeling. After I eat garlic, I can't sleep, but not sleeping for weeks on end in Space would drive people crazy and crazy is never good when you have nowhere to run. Beware of HAL.

Still Lifes On Other Planets

NASA released photos from their Rover vehicle this last week and I was stuck how much the sere close-up resembled Yves Klein's BLUE SPONGE. Obviously it was another case of art imitating still life on another planet. There will be many more in the centuries to come. If we are going to the stars. And discover the cosmos and not God.

Curiosity On Mars

Last week NASA landed the planet rover CURIOSITY on Mars. The nuclear-powered vehicle suffered little damage to its recording and testing devices, however the scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab have set the CURIOSITY on 'dream' mode during a four-day upload of software for its initial exploration of the Gala Crater. The mission system manager didn't say what kind of dreams the rover was experiencing in the shut-down, but I guess that they would have to be almost seering visions into the future and past with each update to its brain. Once awake then the JPL will program the CURIOSITY'S destination as Mount Sharp Scientists have been poring over pictures of the landing site snapped by Curiosity and spacecraft circling overhead. The pebble-strewn terrain where the rover landed appeared easy to traverse but the landscape gets more rugged the closer to Mount Sharp. The base of the mountain is five miles away. The rover will arrive in the foothills by Christmas. Its top speed is 300 yards a day. Slow, but not going nowhere is slower.

Earthlings Go Home

Walt Disney Pictures lost about $160 millions on JOHN CARTER OF MARS, despite worldwide ticket sales of almost $300,000,000. Mediocre reviews of the sci-fi adaptation of a Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel in tough economic times doomed the movie at the box office. BBC film critic Mark Kermode stated, "The story telling is incomprehensible, the characterisation is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it's a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long." During my stay in Thailand, I thought about purchasing the DVD, but every vendor said the film was a bomb, however I endured the movie on a flight between Bangkok and Tokyo on August 6, the same day NASA was landing the nuclear-powered Curiosity by sky hook on the planet Mars. As part of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission the rover's dowser will will insert neutrons underneath the surface of the Gale Crater to seek out signs of habitability, ie water on our distant neighbor. So far the Curiosity has yet to discover ice or any artifacts from Burroughs' lost civilization of Barsoom, but the search continues for NASA and man. The cost of this exploration is approximately two weeks of the War in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home.

Trash in Space

My friend Eddie Mickie weighed more than 300 pounds. He was the only fat person in Bethpage. Everyone else was thin. The year was 1971. Eddie was so heavy that his weight bend the frame of his Harley. Obsessed by space Eddie lost a third of his mass so he could take a glider flight. None of us thought much about going to Space, but Eddie explained the urgency of our departure from Earth.

"When the shit gets a foot high, you have to step a foot higher."

The shit floating in the present atmosphere would cover the earth in several meters of ash if the shit settled to Earth. Somehow all the emissions remain aloft despite of gravity as does the trash orbiting our home world. Over a half-million separate objects are hurtling through space at speeds unknown to the surface. One NASA genius went so far as to unleash thousands of little needles to facilitate the transmission of radar signals. The project was a failure.

Now the shit is not only a foot high, it's sky high too. No alien in his right mind would dare risk passage through that maze of crap, which means no one is coming to save us in 2012. At least not ET. He's staying home, if he knows what is good for him.