OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLSHIT ORDERS

Mars Rover Beginning To Hate Mars

PASADENA, CA—After nearly three years of nonstop data collection, Spirit has begun transmitting obscene gestures and confusing rants.

I know a lot fo you probably read The Onion from time to time, which is really one of the funniest web sites around. However, this article made me laugh harder than I have in a long time. Honestly, I really do love space exploration. I used to read all about it when I was younger, considered aerospace engineering as a step to being an astronaut, know all about the obscure history (did you know the Soviets had a moon shot ready to beat Apollo 11, but the rocket blew up on the launch pad), and I even bought Tom Hanks' DVD set From the Earth to the Moon!

Thus, I closely followed the development, launch and landing of Spirit and Opportunity. But that was 3 years ago! It really is funny that these things are still rolling around the surface of Mars doing useless science, and engineers are posting riveting mission updates such as this epic, "Spirit Clears Away Dust, Gets New Software Upgrade." It is even funnier that there is a crew of highly educated scientists holed up in some bunker/mission control, living life based on Martian sols. That's right, they only work when it's daytime on Mars. Since Mars has a longer day than Earth, that makes for some pretty interesting work hours!

Alright, enough joking around. Read the article and laugh your butt off. Then, look forward to the next big space mission that doesn't include some rich dude shelling out $20 million to waste a seat on a rocket to the ISS. The new NASA launch vehicles are in development, and real space exploration will resume in the next 2 decades: Moon return by 2018 and Mars missions in the planning stages.