Honestly, those inter-stellar hooligans should be locked up!

Look, there's the old universe slowly doing what universes do which is mostly minding their own business when suddenly this bunch of European hooligans send several trillion-zillion of my hard-earned dosh - yes, alright, it wasn't all my money but it's always important to personalise government spending, it builds the anger! - up into the 'wild black yonder' and then, after a few rowdy handbrake U-turns, they deliberately crashed and smashed it into a bit of space detritus which was meandering along doing no-one any harm.  You wait until Capt. Kirk gets a hold of them, he'll teach them how to behave properly!

Of course, in mitigation for what looks like a stellar waste of money, these scientific 'brainiacs' assure us that really, really valuable lessons have been learned.  Oh yeah, what exactly?  Well, they tell us, we'll find out what the earth is made of, as though anyone cared, and in any case we already know more or less.  Or, they plead when they notice your eyes glazing over, we'll find out how life began.  Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it but in the meantime who wants to know - and why?  And what will they be tempted to do when they find out?  And also in the meantime can't any of you space swots think of better ways to blow several trillion-zillion euros?

Of course, I do realise that the sky at night is a beautiful and fascinating spectacle - on the odd occasion when its not cloud-obscured and pissing down with rain - but couldn't they have found something a bit more interesting to aim at than a bit of rubble obviously left over by the 'Oirish' builders who never seem to finish any building works!  I mean, they could have aimed at the north star which would at least have satisfied my curiosity.  I have looked at it occasionally over the years and I still don't quite understand why, with everything else on the move, it remains in the same place pointing north!  I have a theory!  I think the whole universe is just a huge, circular, spinning, painted canvas created by that prankster, God, and the north pole is simply the nail he used to fix it in position.  Well, that's my theory!

Editor's Note:  This blog post was absolutely and definitely NOT written with the aid of three dry martinis!  It's just that sometimes I have these flights of fancy.

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

"This blog post was absolutely and definitely NOT written with the aid of three dry martinis!" Something more in the "herbal family"?

[Bob]

David, the last two posts show prejudices against inventiveness and science. You also seem to think the world could be flat. Do you also believe in spontaneous generation and get around Somerset on a mule?

[backofanenvelope]

Doesn't everyone?

[David Duff]

No, no, Bob, my admiration for the late Mr. Biro is enormous. However, my admiration for stellar exploration is in inverse proportion to the amount of tax money it costs!

Oh, and there's nothing wrong with mules, they do be loved in Zummerzet!

[TheBigHenry]

David,

Interstellar flights of fancy? Technically, it would take more than three dry martinis to get you there. You'd need some of Captain Kirk's warp drive in the mix to go interstellar -- that's between stars, BTW. The nearest star to our sun is more than 4 lightyears away (yes, I googled it, Dom).

[Bob]

The great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed taxes are what we pay for civilized society. That includes NASA, which might have discovered a means for real life warp drive: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/50361/20150504/nasa-emdrive-one-step-closer-reality-warp-theoretically-possible.htm

That would allow the more civilized among us to move to Zog, leaving the Earthling hoi polloi to continue mucking about with the likes of Brexit and Trump worship.

[David Duff]

Bob, the sooner all you, er, 'civilised' people move to Zog the better. Then us 'earthlings' can get on with excellent ideas like brexit!

[AussieD]

Bob to what grand leap of faith do you attribute the possibility that the Zogians would entertain the idea of a bunch of "progressives' settling on their planet?

If they are half smart they will have been monitoring the Nanny Statism of "Progressiveness" on this planet and will want nothing of it or its proponents.

[Hank]

David

I think the whole universe is just a huge, circular, spinning, painted canvas created by that prankster, God, and the north pole is simply the nail he used to fix it in position.

Actually that is a pretty good informal description of the cosmology of the Book of Genesis chapter 1.

God must have looked forward and cribbed from you blog. :- )

[Loz]

The European Space Agency isn't an EU organisation.

The UK Space Agency donates 10% of its funding to the ESA, and the UKSA itself is funded by HMG i.e. you.

So its actually British hooligans that are chucking your money at smashing satellites into planetary bodies.

And you just voted to be exclusively robbed by these British hooligans because "it's ok because they're British". So stop complaining!

You asked for it to be so, and said it was alright because they're British! Now enjoy while your money is smashed into comets with no checks and balances from EU regulations about state subsidization, nationalization, and anti-competition practices.

Smile and applaud, the interstellar firework party of your cash!

SoD

[Penseivat]

Surely Newton's Laws apply in outer space. Striking a moving object with another object, no matter how small, may affect the trajectory of the larger object. Not that it will bother us, but in a few hundred years time, the occupants of planet Zug may be wiped out as a comet carrying a bit of metal with "Made in Hong Kong" stamped on it, thumps into their little world. The Law of Unintended Consequences and all that. Still, we get to find out what the earth is made from, so that's allright then.

[backofanenvelope]

Zog.

[Bob]

AussieD,

You might be right, but with warp drive we'd have a chance to find another planet advanced enough to give political refugees a chance. For the time being many Americans have been settling for Canada.