OK, so picture this. Brilliant scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are sitting around, wondering about their next project. All of a sudden, one jumps up.

‘OK fellas,’ he says, taking off his glasses for dramatic effect. ‘How about this? Forget all the problems we had with the Mars missions. Disregard the takeoff and landing problems with the Shuttle Discovery. Ignore the criticism from countless scientists calling for the disbandment of NASA. I’ve got a way to beat them all.’

The group is exited, and they rise together in a blur of white coats and pocket protectors. ‘What is it?’ they ask as one.

‘OK, how about instead of waiting for something to go wrong with one next ship,’ the scientist replies, ‘we build a probe and then crash it into the moon! Why? Well, to see if water possibly exists somewhere a little under the surface!’

The scientists, congratulating each other for being geniuses, each celebrate with a banana … but only one. You can’t have too much excitement in a day.

NASA announced Monday that it’s scheduled a probe to be launched in 2008 to crash into the moon. The collision is going to be visible from Earth and will create a hole the size of about a third of a football field. The Mothership, after releasing the probe, is going to fly around looking for traces of ice or vapor thrown up from the crash. What is this going to cost? Only $600 million.

This actually isn’t the first time NASA has purposely built a ship to crash. So why do it again? Because they actually failed the first couple times. Perhaps this time NASA should schedule the ship to fly around the moon and then celebrate when the ship inevitably crashes into the surface.

On a side note, this project just barely beat out NASA’s other priority of exploration: sending more monkeys into space, but this time have them all wearing cowboy hats … you know, just to see what happens.

Godspeed, NASA.

Published on April 10, 2006 at 12:00 pm