The Search for Martians Gets Money
June 29th, 2006
From the AP: “President Bush’s plan to send man to Mars in coming decades received a green light Thursday as the House passed a bill funding the annual budgets of NASA and the departments of Commerce, Justice and State.”
I’ll try to be optimistic…maybe we’ll find Usama bin Laden there. But really…what are the nuts in Congress thinking!? We’re cutting intelligence and law enforcement budgets, but we’ll throw money at Mars. Rep. Barney Frank states it well:
Sending human beings to Mars … is a luxury that this country cannot now afford. The justification for sending people to Mars is political. It is psychological. It is cultural. It is not scientific.
Marsians? Is that the politically correct way to refer to the people of Mars? I was always taught that they were Martians, but that could be a politically incorrect steeotype based upon “Marvin the Martian”. I definitely don’t want to make the Marsians/Martians mad by mispronoucning their names. After all, they have ray guns (or is that just a misguided stereotype as well)?