Tag Archives: Mars

BB #61: News Bubbles

I have a growing list of links to articles that catch my eye, things I’d like to post about (for whatever reason). But there’s a tension between posts based on lists of links or draft posts or idea files versus posts based on what I’m currently thinking about.

I seem to feel the latter isn’t enough, that I need a reserve for “lean times” — which never happen. More and more, I post when something strikes me as worth the effort. The “idea pile” seems almost like homework.

Anyway, here are some things that recently caught my eye.

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Trump Fires Self!

fired

I’ll Make Mars Great Again!

In a surprise move today, GOP front-runner The Donald Trump announced his resignation from the presidential race claiming it was all “just a tremendous joke — amazing! I never thought anyone would believe it for a second… but I pulled it off perfectly, of course.”

Mr. Trump said he would devote his time now to building a Great Wall of Mars, which he said would be “way better than China’s so-called Great Wall; it’ll be tremendous, and it will look amazing!” He claims the Martians will pay for the wall, and that it will make space “great again.”

Two former Republican candidates for the highest office, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, told reporters they wished Mr. Trump every success and offered their assistance in hastening his departure for the red planet. Both Floridians said they’d be glad to personally strap him to any of NASA’s larger boosters.

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Beating Swords into Rockets

Saturn V

Kudos and congratulations to Curiosity! The Mars Space Laboratory — the “rover” — is safely down on Mars. Other blogs have covered it in great detail, so I won’t go into it. The Bad Astronomer is a great place to start with anything space-related; here’s a good one, and here’s another. Maki, over at sci-ənce, has a really cute comic. And you can always count on Randall Monroe, over at xkcd, for a good take on it. (And speaking of xkcd and Mars, I’ve always loved this one.)

But I do just want to say, “Wow! This is really cool!”

And isn’t Curiosity an apt name for a mission designed to slake ours.

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