452 Million

Posted on May 25, 2008

The Phoenix has landed! Touchdown was accomplished this evening in the northern reaches of Mars, apparently without incident.

We managed to get it there for only $452 million. That’s just over a dollar a mile for the trip. Not too bad ’cause that’s the cost of the vehicle plus the gas.

What’s it all about, Alfie? Well, we’ve had these little rover energizer bunny guys up there for ages. They keep tooling around all over the place and finding…nothing new, really. Why don’t we just send them a cyanide pill or something? They’ve done their duty. Let ‘em go away quietly.

After all, we now have The Phoenix. The great and mighty one, designed to stay right where it fell, no moving at all, and just dig in the dirt, so to speak. It’s mission? Find ice.

Sound I a bit acrimonious? I was hoping so.

How about this? In addition to its sophisticated cameras, soil retrievers and mini-labs, Phoenix carried on its journey a mini-DVD created by the Planetary Society called “Visions of Mars.” It holds a library of science fiction stories and art, as well as the names of more than 250,000 people. The DVD, featuring the likes of Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury, is made of material designed to last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Hello? Didn’t they overlook a couple of things? Most ‘Marshans’ don’t have DVD players, they’re antiquated there. And the ones to be found spin the disk backwards (you know they landed on the other side of the equator), so Arthur C. Clarke is heard to say something that sounds like, ‘on the whole I’d rather be in Ceylon.’

I’ve got some really dumb ideas of what to do with 452 million, I guess. Like build thousands of houses for the poor — here. Teach tens of thousands of Hispanics to speak English — here. Get high-speed Internet to rural areas — here. Invest in technology to replace IC engines and their need for gasoline — here. Must I persist?

Thank goodness The Phoenix landed successfully. If it had crashed, our 452 million would have been wasted…