To the Moon George

I just got my absentee ballot for the big “Super Tuesday” primary. I’m feeling especially mighty knowing that I’m part of an American tradition that is super-sized. But I was extremely disappointed when I opened my ballot. All our fancy technology! All those fears of dangling chads! The ballot was nothing more than a fill-in-the-blank. After that Florida nonsense I thought it would come in a child-proof hermetically sealed vacuum packed case with a an infrared pen filled with invisible ink to be read by experts with million-dollar goggles. Nope. It’s just a piece of oak tag with 345 red ovals and a warning to stay in the lines and use a black or blue pen. At least there’s some progress since my first fill-in-the-blank test back in 1966 when Mrs. Silverman supplied us 1st graders with official Number 2 Ticonderoga pencils. I was equally disappointed when the President’s big space initiative included a trip to Mars with a cosmic truck stop on the Moon. No matter what your politics, “been there, done that.”

If it’s true that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, it figures that since he’s a guy, George Bush wants to send men to Mars. I’m sure the Democratic Party would like to vote him off this planet and ship him there. I’m equally certain there are lots of Democrats who already think he’s on Pluto. Personally, I think President Bush might be watching a tad bit too much of Star Trek: The Next Generation - Twice Removed. Instead he should tune into Channel 217 on my cable service - “NASA Select.” Twenty-four hours of rarely riveting television. I’d say 79.3845% of the time I’m watching some wave form monitor updating the trajectory of an unmanned rocket hurtling through space at a rate that if calculated in light years, is going to reach its final destination after O.J. Simpson finds his ex-wife’s real killer.

It’s not that I’m dissing the President, but this idea of setting up house on the Moon and then make a quick 5 light years trip to Mars has me wondering. Did the President don his low-tech 3D glasses to catch the images the Mars Rover is beaming back to earth? It’s one big DUST BOWL and we’re not talking about a championship football game waiting for a better name. Come to think of it, what a great way to fund the project. Selling off the naming rights to the Moon station. Instead of the famous ‘Sea of Tranquility’ we could have Chicken of the Sea of Tranquility. Boy, that’ll really confuse Jessica Simpson. (“Is it a sea of tranquil chickens? Can chickens breast stroke?”)

I’m not against travel in space. Especially when it comes to leg-room on airplanes. I remember the enormous impact of that first Moon landing. The entire world focused on one single event -- everyone, no matter what skin color, what language -- riveted to a television waiting to see if the Eagle had landed. It was also a giant step for many products we now take for granted like the Internet, Tang (bleech!), Teflon, Mylar and Velcro. Just imagine this year’s Superbowl half time without the advent of Velcro. Although I don’t think you could call a wardrobe malfunction a great leap for mankind.

Some of my more feminist friends may be wondering why I am not complaining about the choice of Mars over the more feminine Venus. It’s a weighty matter. Mars has a 1/3rd less gravitational force than does our terra firma. On Mars I’m practically anorexic, tipping the scales at a svelte 55.84 pounds. While on Venus, where things are not so light, I’m a more portly 136 pounds. Then there are issues of more gravity - age. On Venus, I’m a crusty old gal of 70 years. But, on Mars I’m just a 23-year-old newbie, getting ready to vote in her first Presidential election, by absentee ballot with a dark blue pen poised over a fill-in-the-blank within the lines on an absentee ballot.

www.nasa.gov