dailyprompt-2102

All Aboard!

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Data visualization of the Sun from the Moon as seen from Hadley Rille, the Apollo 16 landing site. The topography and shadows are scientifically accurate. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

The thing about Space Travel isn’t the cost it would take to get  you to the Moon or to Mars ( I’m down with that, I’ll explain more later ).

This isn’t about money.

If you want to travel to a place like The Moon, or Mars, or one of Jupiter’s  or Saturn’s Moons the question is:

How many YEARS of your life would you be willing to pay  to make those trips?

If you were able to take a trip to Mars today the cost would be  2-3 years of your life. If you traveled to Titan, the current travel time based on the our existing technology  would be seven years. So we are talking about a hefty price tag of 14-16 YEARS.

So the question is, would you pay almost sixteen years of your life to rocket to Titan and orbit around Saturn? Would it be worth the chance to see and touch a new world? To be part of a journey that would change the way humanity sees their place in the Universe? To look up into a sky that human eyes have ever taken in? Maybe even see a new life form in it’s natural enviorment?

Titan orbits Saturn in this Cassini image.

Here is my answer, it’s simple.

If I could take my dog with my I’d leave for Titan or Mars TONIGHT.

All dogs go to Mars!

I’m Already There

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Photo J.M. Moscoso

If I had a enough money  in the world to do anything I wanted to do, if I had a bank account healthy enough to go anywhere in the world ( or off world )-

I wouldn’t pay to go to the moon –

but if I could be convinced if we knew for sure that on the surface of the Moon there is a graveyard.

I would pull out my checkbook, my credit cards if you told me that once upon a time- thousands of years ago, maybe even millions of years ago a ship full of astronauts  went mad because the closer they got to the Moon they changed.

They howled. They ranted and raved. Some of them escaped from the ship without putting on their space suits and when they set foot on the moons dusty, chalky,  airless surface their blood boiled, they died and then they froze.

They  were dead  the  unafflicted  believed. So they buried them with their eyes open.

But of course, we know unless they put a silver bullet into their hearts, the bodies they buried  on the Moon were not dead at all.

You bet I’d go to the Moon for that and I  would take a shovel.

Photo J.M Moscoso