Good News, not really.

This just in from the Life Explained Department of Things you Should Worry About (motto; Don't sweat the small stuff. There is no small stuff.) NASA has a department to track asteroids that might hit the Earth.

While that might seem like a comforting thought, until you read the article. Until you see the lackadaisical approach the space agency is taking towards these menaces hurtling towards the planet right now you will see the cause for alarm.

There are almost 14,000 near Earth objects being tracked right now.  Of course that is not counting the ones they can't see. Like, for example, the one that smashed into Russia in 2013. 

"Most of our survey telescopes are ground based, and so therefore they can only observe at night. This object came in daylight out of the sun... It was a very small object only a little less than a 20 meters and ours systems are really aren't capable of finding objects that small very far out in space." 

What?!?!? It smashed into our planet, which is in close space. In broad daylight and nobody could see it?

So, what do you plan to do if you are lucky enough to look up at the right time and see an object that is big enough to catch your eye? What then, NASA office of disaster aversion?

Well, in that case they would send the kinetic impactor out to persuade the object to move along, we don't want any trouble. 

Again, a NASA spokesperson,  “What you need to do ... is just change its velocity by a slight amount and if you do that enough years in advance you only have to change that velocity by a few millimeters per second. And so you just slam a kinetic impactor into it at the right velocity vector and that will impart the energy to either speed it up or slow it down, depending on which way you want to move it enough so that a hit becomes a miss.”

Well, that might work, but “years in advance” sounds a little troubling. How is testing so far?”

NASA hopes to launch a mission to test it soon. 

So, if NASA can spot something big enough and far enough away they can possibly avert it enough to keep it from destroying the planet, provided it is at night. I will sleep a lot better from now on.

Good News, We Have A New Associate.

Meet Bob, our new accounting apprentice. And the eye candy gracing our new logo.  Bob, you can call him Bob, Bo, Bobby, Robert, or Robby, he is very relaxed, is from Rock Island IL. Which is part of the Quad Cities, grouped along the Mississippi River in the Southeast corner of Iowa where it borders Illinois.  Bob, never really knew if he should tell people he was from Iowa or Illinois so he just said he was from Colorado.

Meet Bob.

He graduated with honors and a degree, and hopes and dreams, and aspirations of changing things. Bob longed for the opportunity to make a difference. But, he ended up working for us, instead.

Welcome aboard, Bob, could you run out and get some coffees, and donuts, and some of those everything bagels. There's a good fellow.

Bob is going to fit in real well.

Now, onto the news of the day. The New Horizons deep space probe is passing Pluto and sending back photos, and information, and people are very excited. Of course, people seem to have forgotten that in 2006 the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto was not a planet at all. They, if memory (and by memory I mean the internet) serves correctly reduced Pluto's status to Dwarf Planet.

It seems that Pluto dropped in from the Kuiper Belt and fell into orbit with eight real planets and kind of put on airs. But, it was obviously not willing to fit in, it always had to be kind of a showoff. It did not settle for a more or less flat circular orbit, like the real planets, it had to zip around with an inclination of almost 17 degrees. what a showoff.  No real planet would be caught dead acting like that.

Plus, it was small, covered in ice, and just not really made of planetary stuff. Now, though, all of these "scientists" are running around trying to snap selfies looking at streamed data from the New Horizon's orbit of Pluto. We, here at Life Explained, are not going to get caught up in all that sensationalism, and pseudo science.

It has nothing to do with the fact that NASA will not let us look, either. Probably still mad about that horrendous butt kicking we gave them in The Scientist Slow Pitch Softball Tourney. Sore losers, anyway.

There are other celestial bodies in the sky, you know.

Space, it belongs to everybody, get some now.

Astronaut Scott Kelly, who is not married to a congress woman, which is shocking, the resemblance is remarkable, they could be brothers...  Wait, this just in, astronauts Scott Kelly, and Mark Kelly (husband of a retired congress woman) are brothers.  Back to the news.  Astronaut Scott Kelly is preparing to spend a year in space.

It has been quite a while since Americans have had the opportunity to feel any sense of accomplishment in space exploration.

We watched with wonder, and amazement when the European Space Agency landed a washing machine sized probe on a comet.  We applauded the feat with the rest of the world, all while thinking, "that could have been our home appliance."

We thanked Sir Richard Branson for having the entrepreneurial spirit, fortitude, and ingenuity to launch the first commercial, privately owned space tourism business.  Knowing full well, "we could be gouging rich people for a few minutes in low space orbit."

Now, though, thanks to NASA, Scott Kelly, American grit, sticktoitivness, bulldog like tenacity, and what can only be considered an ingenious end run around a gridlocked, bickering, tantrum throwing, responsibility ignoring, finger pointing assembly of elected officials, we finally have something to say, "space, we'll take a little, thank you," about.

It really got the guys, and girls, scientists, and engineers, here at Life Explained excited.  It was time to dust off the old "potential space experiments" file and see what they (our government, and its space agency) could do to help us help you, and everybody else, of course.  We like you, and all, but that is a lot of time and money, too much for one person, even you.

Unfortunately, we found out that not everybody shares our zeal for research and development.  According to a NASA spokesperson "our scientists disagree with your conclusions about the greatly reduced cooking time for rising crust crust pizza in zero gravity.  Further, they feel that the crust rises sufficiently for any pizza enthusiast in Earth's atmosphere.  To complicate matters, there is not room for pizza oven and stone in the small craft used to shuttle Astronaut Kelly to the International Space Station.  If you would like to attempt your experiment in the depths of the ocean we would be happy to put you in contact with the NOAA.  Thank you, for your interest."

Dang it!  We pay taxes.  We have rights.  That is what happens when you put a bunch of old people in charge of anything.  Nothing ever gets done.

We have decided to develop a space station of our own.  It should be pretty easy, all of the technology has been developed, we feel this was probably the most difficult, expensive part.  Now we just need to adapt to fit our budget.  Cargo containers are going for a song.

If you would like to get in on the ground floor of this exciting venture, and possibly become an astronaut yourself, don't delay.  Send a donation to "Life Explained, Explains Space Travel." today.  The biggest donator gets "shotgun."

Methane, oh my that is nice.

NASA reports that the Mars Rover Curiosity discovered a methane source on Mars.  It was very exciting news, though I am not sure why.  Here is the article, describing in great detail, the important discovery.  Methane, WOW.  They feel it is a very important discovery.

We, here at Life Explained (#lifeexplained) offer our most sincere congratulations.  While it is true that we have long held a festering, seething, bitter, rancorous animosity towards the space exploration giant we are so glad they have managed to land a drone on the surface of an alien planet.

Of course, it took a fat wad of cash, enough money to provide us, at Life Explained (#costeffectivespaceexploration) with the means to travel through space, and time, and possibly a couple of dimensions as well.  We are still working out the math on interdimensional time/space travel, so we are not completely certain how much that will cost.  We are certain it will cost a lot less than NASA would charge, though.

That is really the issue we have with NASA, all of the money, while we are selling asteroid chunks, and moon rocks just to scrape by, they have expansive, sumptuous offices in Houston, a huge, technologically advanced launch facility at Cape Canaveral, facilities in California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Delaware, New York, and Maryland, and these are just the ones they admit to.

You can call us stupid, and you can call us paranoid, but don't call us and tell us that the National Space and Aeronautics Administration doesn't have a whole crew of scientists and engineers working on the space ships in Roswell.  Area 51, sure we all know about that one, but what we would like to know is what about Area 1, all the way through Area 50, what about those.  They act like Area 51 is a big secret, and keep us all talking about what is hidden in the cavernous, underground laboratories, and research facilities just to keep us from asking about the first fifty...  Oops, sorry about that.

It wasn't cool like Methane, but we found this on Mars.

Anyway, we would like to congratulate our brothers on the frontier of scientific achievement.  This is an important first step in the exploration of space, a great beginning.  Oh, and by the way if you run across any of our friends on Mars, tell them we will stop and say hello, on our way back to Earth.  Tell them we will bring the pizza.

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.

One Small Step, Oh Heck, This Is Huge.

We, here at Life Explained (#lifeexplained) would like to congratulate our fellow genius scientists from the European Space Agency for landing a craft, an unmanned drone, on a comet.   At 5:03 local time, (local to Germany, not the comet, we are looking into what time it was on the comet, a fairly important question as their is the matter of overtime (time and a half) if it was after their regularly scheduled shift) the Philae Lander touched down, making history.  Bravo, European Space Agency.

This was an impressive feat, to be sure.  To quote James L. Green, the Director of NASA's planetary sciences division, "How audacious!  How exciting!  How unbelievable to be able to dare to land there."  Well put, Director Green, well put.

It was not without miscue, two harpoons that should have secured the lander to the surface of the comet did not fire, so Philea may not be secured properly.  Despite the problems it was a successful, extraordinary accomplishment, and we applaud the hard working scientists and engineers who pulled it off.

All of these space events, all of these daring firsts, all of the excitement, potential disasters and tremendous successes made us long for the old days, when Americans were leading the charge into space, putting men on the moon, orbiting, flying, landing in huge splashes of enthusiasm and excitement.  Before the dark days of government shutdowns, spending cuts, and the garroting of scientific research, and achievement.

In an effort to balance the field, a little, we, here at Life Explained, have taken it upon ourselves to fund a manned mission to a comet.  It was expensive, but we feel it was worth the money.   We cannot concede scientific glory and advances to the rest of the world without a fight.

Here is our first picture from the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas Mission.

Way to go, Doctor Dawg.

Hey, NASA, great idea, whose was it?

Charles Bolden, NASA chief, recently held a press conference announcing his plans to send a manned mission to mars.  He feels this is the only way to assure the continued existence of humanity. He did not detail his reasons for concern, and we are kind of grateful.  However, we are compiling a list of our own, "Life Explained Threats to the Continued Existence of Humanity, so far we have;

1-Humanity (we are researching an antidote for this affliction)
2-Spiders
3-Invasive Species (including spiders)

But that is not what we are here to talk about today.  We are here to discuss timing, and gratitude.  Readers will probably remember Life Explained advocating this very course of action.

See, we told you it was a good idea.

As is plain to see, either we have very good ideas, well ahead of everybody else, or we have a time machine.  Unfortunately, we are not allowed to disclose that information, contractual obligations, you know?  But, you can thank us later, or earlier, if you have a time machine.