Alright, so Blue Origin finally managed to land their New Glenn booster. Big deal. I mean, let's be real, are we really supposed to throw a parade for a company that's just now catching up to what SpaceX was doing, like, a decade ago?
The launch itself, yeah, fine, it happened. They sent a couple of NASA probes, Blue and Gold (catchy names, guys), on some convoluted, year-long detour to Mars. A "flexible approach," they're calling it. Sounds more like a way to justify missing the damn launch window.
The "Flexible" Route to Obscurity
This whole ESCAPADE mission, or whatever, is supposed to help us understand how the sun is stripping away Mars' atmosphere. Important? Maybe. Exciting? Not really, especially when you consider that these "low-budget satellites" cost over $100 million. A bargain? Give me a break. That's chump change compared to other space missions, sure, but it's still a hell of a lot of taxpayer money for something that sounds about as thrilling as watching paint dry... on Mars.
And this "innovative flight plan"? A million-mile detour past the moon, loitering for almost a year before even thinking about heading to Mars? It's like driving to Los Angeles by way of Bangor, Maine. Sure, you eventually get there, but why?
"This is an exciting, flexible way to get to Mars because in the future… we could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering," says some Robert Lillis guy.
Translation: "We screwed up the timing, but hey, maybe this will be useful someday!"
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe this is a genuinely groundbreaking mission. But forgive me if I don't exactly jump for joy over a slightly cheaper, slightly slower route to the red planet.
Bezos' Midlife Crisis Continues
Let's not forget who's behind all this: Jeff Bezos. The guy who brought us one-click shopping and now wants to colonize space. It's all part of his grand vision, offcourse, the centerpiece of his Amazon-fueled ego trip. A 321-foot-tall monument to his own ambition.
They even named the landing ship after his mother. I mean, come on. Is there any level of self-aggrandizement these billionaires won't stoop to?
And the booster's nickname? "Never Tell Me The Odds." Seriously? It's like they're trying to make this sound like a bad sci-fi movie.
Speaking of movies, I'm still waiting on my package from Amazon. Says it's "in transit," but I suspect it's orbiting the moon right now, thanks to this "flexible" delivery system.
The Contamination Conundrum
Okay, I'll admit, there's one vaguely interesting angle to this whole thing: planetary protection. This Denisse Aranda, a Blue Origin engineer, is apparently in charge of making sure we don't accidentally contaminate other planets with our Earth germs. Alumna at Blue Origin worked on the New Glenn rocket that launched into space today
"We are protecting the planets and moon in our Solar System," she says. "Essentially, we don’t want to get our Earth microbes, DNA and germs, and deposit them on other planets. That would be really problematic for the search of life in the universe"
I guess that's a valid concern. I mean, imagine if we sent a bunch of spacefaring bacteria to Mars, and then, years later, we "discovered" life there. Awkward.
Still, it's hard to get too worked up about microscopic contamination when we're already busy trashing our own planet. Maybe we should focus on cleaning up Earth before we start worrying about Mars' microbial ecosystem. Just a thought.
Another Billionaire's Space Toy
So, Blue Origin landed a rocket. NASA sent some probes on a scenic tour of the solar system. Jeff Bezos gets to feel like a real-life Buck Rogers. And I'm stuck here, paying for it all with my taxes and waiting for my damn package. What a time to be alive.