A change of plans, and possibly destination.

Great News!!!  Gasoline prices have plummeted, they are insanely cheap.  Stopping to fill up on the way to work this morning, the price, after our grocery discount, was almost ridiculous.  Not that we are complaining.

With prices this low it was decided that it was time to move our Space Exploration Initiative schedule ahead a little bit.

We are very excited by this, we have been planning this for months, and sometimes, with the people around here, and all of the annoying, petty, attention to detail ("make sure the rockets are bolted tightly to the side or it could explode," "check the coolant, or it could explode") it has seemed like centuries.  Engineers are really irritating sometimes.

 At first we were going to take off to Mars, it is close, and it gets all of the press.  Who doesn't want to meet a Martian, after all?  But, it has been looked at quite a bit lately.  And you know, if we land there now, NASA will get all whiny, and if Curiosity ever breaks down they will blame us, no matter when it happens.  Man, did they get mad when we took this picture of Professor Dawg.  You can't blame them, really, it would be so difficult to depend on the federal government for your continued existence.  Imagine going before the Houses of Congress, asking for a few bucks, and watching everybody start screaming childishly at each other and then shut down the government.  It would be kind of tough.

Keeping NASA, and all of their problems in mind, and considering how ludicrously, ridiculously inexpensive gas is, we have decided to visit Jupiter instead.

Of course, space travel is incredibly complicated, imagine driving to the store to grab some cervezas and a couple of frozen pizzas (the good kind, maybe Red Stripe, and DiGiornos, as long as you are imagining it might as well be the good stuff, it doesn't cost anymore to imagine big, right?), but the store is moving, so you have to adjust your speed, and direction accordingly.  Now imagine that you were just planning on visiting your neighbor, and all of your formulas and calculations were designed around a trip to the end of the block, and all of the sudden, because you saved so much on gas you decided to take a longer trip to the store, and you have to go quickly before greed, and indifference toward consumers, causes the price of gas to "skyrocket" (a little space exploration humor).  If you just imagined all of that you can see our potential problems.

Considering this, we might be visiting Saturn.  Which would be kind of cool, there are all of those rings, and stuff.  Not to worry, though, we have taken extra snacks, clean clothes, and a few extra cases of bottled water.  It might be difficult to find a convenience store once you get past Mars.