Rocket Boosters

by Howard Altman

I really expected to see people on Mars by now. Or at the very least the moon, which is only 250,000 miles away, about the same mileage my old housemate Cedric The Blacksmith got out of his rusted yellow Honda.

Instead we have the Mir, which is about half as reliable as Cedric's old clunker and twice as ugly.

At several billion times the cost.

The problem is that we are frittering away our meager space funds on low-orbiting tenements and geriatric g-force junkies.

And we're not being financially creative enough to afford any better.

This much I have learned from Jonathan's Space Report (JSR), an interesting electronic newsletter I've been receiving since I signed up for it about four years ago.

Put out by Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA, the report is a faithful collection of tidbits on stuff that is launched into space.

The latest report was delayed, ironically enough, due to the author's travel problems here on earth. Tardy or otherwise, it points out, quite by accident I am sure, the reason why humanity has not been able to venture very far for very long from our lonely little orb.

In the martini-dry verbiage of a serious man of science, McDowell reports, for example, that the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, otherwise known as the AXAF, has been renamed.

The AXAF is now called the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which will be launched next April.

The Chandra, writes McDowell, is named in honor of physicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar.

Which is nice.

Because I am sure that Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was a very fine physicist, or otherwise why would anyone name an AXAF after him?

But naming things after very fine people doesn't get them built any faster.

Bernie Parent was a very fine goalie, but you don't see his name on any arena.

You see CoreStates Spectrum or, as it is known now, the aptly named FU Center.

Neither the people who run CoreStates nor the people who run First Union are Nobel candidates. But the arena got built and financed with a healthy dollop of their money.

Well, their customers' money, which they suck up at ATM machines around town.

Still, that same principal of free market telemetry should apply in space.

Sorry, old Subramanyan, but if the AXAF were named after a sneaker or a soda brand, that tub of tubes would have been launched into orbit last April.

The Russians, who can't run an airline, let alone a space program, still manage to rocket junk into orbit because they subsidize their program, as shoestring as it is, with advertising.

Imagine what NASA could do if the people who were running it had at least one foot on the ground.

This month, in Jonathan's Space Report, the big news is that Two Guys On Spacewalk Attach Tool Bag to Outside of Space Station.

"Ross and Newman made the first spacewalk to connect up cables with Zarya [the Russian section of the Space Station]," McDowell writes. "A canvas tool bag was attached to the exterior… to provide tools to future space walkers."

Big whoop.

A trillion dollars we spent on this thing, and it's about as exciting as two guys in Olney tossing a bag of Snap-Ons into the back of a Chevy pickup.

Slap some Nike swooshes or a Burger King crown on that station and the big news next month could be Two From Space Station Leaving For Mars.

Not that we are ignoring the Angry Red Planet completely.

According to JSR, Japan's Nozomi Mars probe (which sounds like something you would purchase in a Yakuza sex club) is buzzing around the moon on its eventual way to Mars.

NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter recently made a course correction and is also on its way.

Neither of these vehicles, launched nearly 30 years after Armstrong bounced on the moon, has anyone on board.

Space flight will continue to be people-free unless We The Capitalists follow the lead of our formerly Communistic brethren and start marketing our space program.

A natural, considering how much space stations look like a can of Coors Light anyway.

How much do you think the folks at Hard Rock Cafe would pay for the rights to shill overpriced hamburgers in space?

Plenty. Because if people visiting Philly will visit the Hard Rock, wouldn't people visiting the moon visit the Moon Rock?

And it only starts there.

All the money McDonald's spends on contests and slogan changes wouldn't garner nearly the hype as the opening of the first McMars franchise.

And think of the juice GM could generate with endless hours of CNN coverage of the first Buick Moonrover test drive.

OK, so who drinks Tang any more? Though we all do use Teflon.

But if we are ever to reach the lofty ideals of the Einsteins and Bradburys, first we will have to take some lessons from the more earthly acumen of the image icons of Mad Ave.

We already have buses painted up like footwear.

Why not have a rocket painted up like a tampon?

I can hear the message to Mission Control now:

"Uh, Houston, this is the Stay Free Mini Pod. We have a problem."