Parrothead Ramblings

What did they expect would happen with so little ground clearance?

I see in the news today that NASA finally got that Mars Rover car unstuck from a sand dune. Holy cow, gazillions of dollars for this stupid thing, and these numb nuts take it out and get it stuck. Now I'm not talking about that little inconvenient couple of minutes you spent one time, getting a couple of people together to push your car out of the mudhole in which you mindlessly planted it. No, this thing sat there for five weeks while a bunch of literal rocket scientists tried to figure out how to get if out.

Out, that is, from what they describe as a one-foot sand dune.

A one-foot sand dune?

Are you kidding me?

One foot?

All right, it could be that I'm jaded a bit from living in the desert for many years. but one foot does not a sand dune make. That's not a dune. It's not a small dune. It's not even a micro-dune. It ain't shit. It's about the amount of sand your kid dumps out of a bucket at the beach.

How did a team of rocket scientists invent a space car that could get stuck on a bucket of sand? That's anyone's guess. It's what happens when you go out to a bunch of pinhead contractors, announce that you're taking bids to build a space car, and then accept the lowest bidder.

For just a little bit more, they could have had the oversize rims and tires on sale at Discount Tire. Dumb asses.

So, how did they get it unstuck? Well, that's another mystery. They just got up Saturday, played with the joystick, and the damned thing started moving.

Hmmmmm.

The little green pholks who live up there probably got tired of that piece of shit stuck in their neighborhood, went out there Friday night, and unstuck it. I'll bet they used the "rocking" method, where one guy sits in the car and slams the transmission from "forward" to "reverse" over and over again, while the four guys who lost at "scissors, rocks, and paper" get out and push until the damn thing rocks its way out of the rut. Or maybe they used the tried and true "stuff rocks and limbs and shit under the wheels" method. Most likely, they just called the intergalactic AAA guy, and he pulled it out with a tow strap.


I'd like to be a fly on the wall when that bill arrives at Houston Control. I happen to know from recent experience that AAA Tow trucks get somewhere in the vicinity of $4.00 per mile, after the first 100 free miles. What if the dude was on Jupiter when he got the call? He could have been up there on a police impound, because some drunk Venutian with his head in Uranus wrapped his space ship around a light pole. Hell, the dead-head tow truck mileage would be like 550 million miles. That's 2.2 billion bucks. Oh, less $400 for the free miles, but then you still have to pay the guy for his time.

I say let 'em have the space car. We can probably build another, pay the extra for the off-road package, and blast it up there for less than $2.2 Billion.

Man, who's running this outfit anyway?
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