Would You Take a One-Way Ticket To Mars?
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Mars Need Women... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and so do I. That's my only condition.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid." -- Bernie Taupin
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sheldon Cooper would disagree.
Re:Mars Need Women... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, if that kid ever went back to Earth he'd feel like some sort of stranger in a strange land.
Re:Mars Need Women... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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And unless someone come over, how can he reproduce (don't get me started on incest.)
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That kid would probably not even be able to survive on Earth then, considering the higher gravity.
Re:Mars Need Women... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, you get technical support? All I got was a slap on the ass and a "good luck, kid, you're going to need it".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Women are from Omicron Persei 7; men are from Omicron Persei 9.
Re:Mars Need Women... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mars Need Women... (Score:5, Funny)
He said woman, not 72 slashdot users.
The first option is flawed (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
so If someone walked up to you and said:
"WE are going to put you in a cramped metal can for 6 months, and then you will die." you're ok with that?
You're deluded.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:4, Funny)
They're diluted too.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:4, Informative)
Funny. But true. Way back when I was a kid, I did my time on a boomer (ballistic missile submarine). Typically two months plus at a time locked in a can, but we once had to cover a patrol for another boat (five months plus total), then sail back to the States after our patrol for a refit (we took our time - we were six months in the can by the time we reached New London).
And the most important thing you learn on a boomer is that if your boat ever has to perform its design function (launch a missile for anything other than a test), you've got about ten minutes to live, since everyone will hear the missile hatch lock open and fire a torpedo, subroc, or nuclear depthcharge at you (in hopes they can get you before you dump all your birds)....
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:4, Interesting)
100% chance of death if anything goes bad, eh? I guess a single mission having an engine failure, short circuit, oxygen tank rupture, fire, explosion, and depletion of primary power [wikipedia.org] doesn't count as "bad" then?
Space travel is risky, but so is any other activity. With space travel, though, there are enough people paying attention to the flight that most malfunctions can be assessed and fixed when they happen. Of course, there will be some Mars-bound travelers who die in the process, but they will die in the effort to expand the boundaries of human civilization. We will learn from their sacrifice, and the next group won't die so soon.
This is the story of human progress. We learn through death that a large fall is harmful. We learn through death that blood is important. We learn through death that cholera is spread through water. We learn through death that smoke detectors are useful. We learn through death that diabetes is related to the pancreas. Those are just off the top of my head. Fortunately, there's enough of us still living to keep dying for the sake of progress.
Re: (Score:2)
We also learn through death, that you should never elect psychopaths to public office but like a bunch of crazed lemmings the people still listen to the lies and do it.
At least a one way trip to Mars will forever free you from the idiocracy. So you get to quietly putter around until you die, trying to survive with a bunch of like minded people, who will have been screened to remove the psychopaths and narcissists.
The only trap is how far you can actually travel whilst on Mars.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Funny)
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Fair enough for you, but I would rather live doing something meaningful. Raising my children.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you, but the evolution is surely turned upside-down nowadays. Those who reproduce the most are the unintelligent, poor and uneducated. They get the double or triple amount of children on average than those who actually have the resources to take good care of their kids.
Personally I don't want any kids either, I'm happy enough raising two cats. I don't even like kids, I think they are generally too loud, ill-mannered and stupid. They can be cute when they are busy doing something like drawing, but that's about it.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they are generally too loud, ill-mannered and stupid.
Blame the parents who aren't teaching correct behavior and punishing bad behavior.
It pisses me off to no end when other parents complement me on my children's manners, as if they were born with them instead of having it (literally and metaphorically) drubbed into them day in and day out for years.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
evolution is surely turned upside-down nowadays.
Just because evolution has different values than you doesn't mean it's "turned upside-down." Evolution's "goal" has never been an intelligent, rich, well-educated society.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution has no "values" or "goals".
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with you, but the evolution is surely turned upside-down nowadays. Those who reproduce the most are the unintelligent, poor and uneducated.
Where did you learn about evolution? Who told you that being intelligent, wealthy or educated means that you will reproduce?
Survival of the fittest. Fittest doesn't necessarily mean what you want it to. It doesn't have to be directly correlated with intelligence, wealth or education. Stop contorting societal prominence as some accurate benchmark of reproductive fitness.
And for that reason, high reproductive rates aren't necessarily a good measure of fitness either. How likely is it for the offspring to survive? Having 3 kids with a 33% chance of survival is just as well as having 1 kid with a 100% chance.
Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshit. The upper and middle class are popping out babies like nobody's business.
If you include the working class as members of the middle-class, the poor are outnumbered 3-1 in the United States.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
Also very little selection is currently taking place. But plenty of mutations are being passed on. Most any human who wants to reproduce can, right now, and their offspring are very likely to survive and reproduce. Evolution often takes place in two stages. Stage one is expansion. A population is under little pressure and expands with most members able to reproduce, even some with very maladaptive mutations get to reproduce. Eventually a culling event will happen. Nuclear war, ecosystem collapse, or even the dwindling reduction of energy supply in the post-peak-oil world. During that period mal-adapted individuals will be much less likely to reproduce. That's when the real "progress" in evolution really takes place. What's left over when it is done is the "more evolved" version of the species. So say we all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I used to think this too, but apparently there's been quite a bit of research on this issue, and the result is invariably that intelligent people do NOT reproduce less on average. Quite a relief, actually. Maybe people with an IQ of 150 have a slightly harder time finding a mate (though most still do), but what about people with an IQ of 50? There's just as many of those. So on average, it appears we're not doing to badly there. No immediate risk of idiocracy.
There are quite a few other areas where the hum
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Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us would rather die attempting to do something meaningful.
There are plenty of meaningful things to do here on Earth.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at the earth from a high vantage point is doing something meaningful?
Go help out at a soup kitchen for an afternoon. As far as the world is concerned that's doing a lot more.
Now going to Mars... that could provide some useful knowledge. Probably contribute more even in a year then 99.9% of the population in a lifetime. Then again, working on improving AI so that a rover could perform as well or better than a human being on Mars would be an even better use of your time.
I would go. Even with a 50% chance of death. But that's mostly my ego thinking not any logical analysis of actual worth.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:5, Funny)
so If someone walked up to you and said:
"WE are going to put you in a cramped metal can for 6 months, and then you will die." you're ok with that?
You're deluded.
As opposed to the sane people who hear, "We're going to put you in a cramped cubicle for 40 years, and then you will die." Yeah, that sounds A LOT better...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
so If someone walked up to you and said:
"WE are going to put you in a cramped metal can for 6 months, and then you will die." you're ok with that?
You're deluded.
As opposed to the sane people who hear, "We're going to put you in a cramped cubicle for 40 years, and then you will die." Yeah, that sounds A LOT better...
And nothing real to show for it....
40 years in a cubical doing some drone work for Big Corp or 6 months in a cramped metal can and go to another planet to add to mankind's knowledge of the Universe ...
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There are photos of the Earth from space in the desktop wallpaper collection of every GUI I know, among other resources.
I'm at a bit of a loss at how much better it could be to see it through a tiny window.
Also, the view of Earth from Mars is probably only slightly better than the view of Mars from Earth, and most of the improvement would be from the unbreathably thin atmosphere.
Re:Yes, even if it kills me (Score:4, Insightful)
> I'm at a bit of a loss at how much better it
> could be to see it through a tiny window.
Just about every astronaut I've heard has said that staring out the window was one of their favorite activities during downtime in orbit, and they'd all jump at the chance to go back for more.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I always seriously thought that the day I see the earth from space is the day I could die a happy man.
I see my part of the world from space all the same, by receiving signals from weather satellites. While it's not the same as looking out the window on a Shuttle or ISS, it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
Equipment: wire antenna, home-made preamp, modified Radio Shack scanner receiver, computer with my own DSP demodulation software.
...laura
Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Mars body scanners go through *YOU*!
One other condition (Score:2, Insightful)
What kind of lag are we talking, and are there any bandwidth caps?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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At worst you'll get pings of 1.6 million. All you can download, but your TCP requests will probably have timed out.
Not if you send a repeater system of satellites using laser communi- ok, that's it. I need a life.
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I would love to (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I would love to (Score:5, Funny)
sounds like you should send her.
Great place for republicans (Score:2, Troll)
they believe they can live without an environment.
Re:Great place for republicans (Score:5, Funny)
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You must be crazy... (Score:2, Insightful)
Compared to Mars, Antarctica is a garden (Score:5, Interesting)
One key thing I got from Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" series, is how much more pleasant and inhabitable Antarctica is than Mars.
Antarctica has water, breathable air, an atmosphere thick enough to block some harmful solar radiation, 1 G gravity, and at least sometimes is accessible by aircraft from other parts of the world.
Much of the appeal of science fiction depictions of space travel is that usually, everything is shiny and new and high-tech. I don't see the appeal of living in a can for a year or so, in order to spend the rest of my life in a slightly larger can.
Presumably, Mars has significant mineral resources, conveniently at the bottom of a gravity well. If we get the infrastructure to mine on Mars, we'd still not have the resources to get the minerals off Mars. Asteroid mining would be a lot easier -- and we'd probably be better off using robots for that, anyway.
How long would a Martian colony survive if life one Earth were wiped out? How many centuries would it take to make Mars a viable biosphere for terrestrial life? Given the gravity problem, would it *ever* really be a viable biosphere for complex terrestrial life?
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Why not? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm single, I'm highly technical, I love the idea of space exploration, I write and think it would be great tale to tell, I am physically fit, I have no real ties to any serious type of job that if I left would cause a company/world to end, in fact the only thing that I'd have to give up would be beer.
Mmmmmmm, beer. But for Mars I'd give up beer. I'm not saying I like the idea of giving up beer but dammit, for Mars...I'd give up beer. (Oh and my life.)
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Who knows, after a couple of centuries of fiddling with it, your original Martian Crotch beer might be considered among the finest beers in the known universe!
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You wouldn't have to give up beer. All you need is sugar and yeast.
Somehow I don't think a still will be part of the equipment that they would let me take. Unless I do it M.A.S.H. Hawkeye style made out of medical equipment...
That's it, I'm going to Mars.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You don't need a still to make beer. Just some kegs and a source of heat.
And water. Just think, you could make beer with water that has never passed through the digestive system of any other lifeform....
Options broken down (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, even if I would die on impact
This option doesn't make sense. The engineers/mission controllers will do everything to ensure a higher probability of surviving than this.
Yes, if we had a 50% chance of surviving a year
See above.
Yes, if we had a 50% chance of surviving 5 years
See above.
Yes, if we had a 50% chance of surviving 10 years
This may not be too unreasonable, provided there is actually a plan in place to resupply and/or bring the astronaut back to earth within 5 years or less on the premise that we'll set you off to Mars right now, and pick you up later wen we get our better spacecraft/technology finalized. If more than 5 years passes, well, you may be screwed by a probability exceeding 50% if we can't get the technology to bring you back.
No way, round trip only
This would be the logical option, but the hardest to attain of them all.
No way, flying is for the birds
Your standard, albeit stupid, nonsensical Slashdot option.
I'd vote yes in a poll but chicken out later
I voted for this as the majority has as well. I find myself always voting for the option with the highest probability of votes. This one was easy, because it is also the easiest to identify with on many levels.
Stay away from my world, hoo-man.
Occasionally, we are faced with two nonsensical options in Slashdot polls.
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I'd vote yes in a poll but chicken out later
I voted for this as the majority has as well.
It may be the most popular option but 23% as it stands right now is hardly a majority. Not even half of it!
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The first option does make sense for those who don't see a reason to live but are too much cowards for a suicide.
Sounds like an excellent idea! (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Sounds like an excellent idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the "no way" vote is only getting 7%, we could send the other 93% of you on your way
I've done several missions to Antarctica [gdargaud.net] and when I talk with people they are all excited: "I want to go to". But then at the time of actually signing up (or more rarely getting off the ship), they are all thinking about one year away from family, with shitty internet connection, cold, no fresh food, etc... And they bail. Antarctic programs have a hard time finding qualified applicants. I'd expect a one-way Mars program would be a lot worse...
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Sadly, I can't do astronaut (Score:2)
That being said, had I known we would be contemplating a Mars colony in a decade, I would have trained mu
waiting (Score:2)
The best choice.. (Score:2)
A couple of gay astronauts, over 60, and on death row.
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Redundant Options (Score:3)
The kinds of people that actually do this stuff aren't the kind of people to nitpick about probability of survival (let alone guarantees), they just do it. Watch this [guardian.co.uk] a few times and really think about what is going on...truly awe inspiring, superhuman.
No for now (Score:2)
Before I became a parent I would have said yes, and its possible that when my son is grown up I would would go for it, but for the next ten years or so the answer has to be no.
BTW Rocheworld by Robert Forward (aka Flight of the Dragonfly) is a great book about this kind of one way mission scenario.
New Darwin, Australia = Mars (Score:2)
Send our violent criminal there. The ones that don't survive will make good fertilizer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Send our violent criminal there. The ones that don't survive will make good fertilizer.
Nah. Send politicians. Use all the hot air they spout to provide a warm atmosphere. Once that's accomplished, the rest of us can make the trip and find a reasonably hospitable environment waiting for us. Other than a warm atmosphere, the politicians won't accomplish much of anything and all of their B.S. will provide a reasonable growth media.
We get rid of our politicians and we terraform Mars in one easy step.
Cheers,
Dave
Yeah, right (Score:3, Funny)
Ask the question before sending humans up. But did anyone think to ask Spirit or Opportunity for their thoughts before launching them?
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Why wait? (Score:2)
We should send animals to the Moon and possibly to Mars for initial colonization. They are less prone to boredom and psychological games than we are and can reproduce much more quickly, plus exist on a simple diet of the bare essential nutrients. Generations of animals could live and die before we even send the first person to live in space permanently.
We could make real progress on life support systems, harvesting local resources, manned support missions, and so on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Missing option (Score:5, Insightful)
But all of you who voted for the first five options, go ahead and enjoy.
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely yes. Yes yes yes a thousand times yes. Yes with only a 10% chance of survival, yes.
Remember that during the second winter at Jamestown, of the 500 colonists, only 60 survived. [wikipedia.org] But they made it and then they thrived.
Many early colonies suffered complete death [wikipedia.org] or darn close. [wikipedia.org] But they kept going.
As for the length of the voyage, it's a pittance compared to the whaling voyages of the 19th century where men would not see shores for over a year at a time or the naval explorations such as Cook's.
We as a society need to stop mollycoddling ourselves and get out there. It's time to explore and plant our feet on new ground.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably the best comment on a slashdot poll ever! Thanks for putting this in perspective a little bit. I selected "Yes but I'd chicken out" but now that I read your post I'm like "damn I'm such a pussy, that would be fun!"
Seriously, when did the human race decide that surviving was more important than thriving? If people in the 15th and 16th century thought like we do today, no way anyone even gets on a boat. Back then boats sank all the time, I don't have stats, but I bet there was at least a 20% chan
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, 5 centuries back people were dying of mysterious yet unromantic causes back at home, so might as well try out something brave. Now life is pretty good if you stay around. I would go, however, when I'm 70.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
"The X space agency is sending astronauts to their death!" (WSJ)
"Most probably a one way trip" (CNN)
This is why we have such a hard time these days to do great things. We no more want to afford the casualties they did some hundred years ago to take great steps for humanity such as discovering our planet. Now we want to discover our solar system, and we find it "shocking" that we may sacrifice one, two or three lives for the advancement of science and our species?
I think we are just being cowards, both politically and socially. If we take no risks, we won't lose anything. But what will we earn staying where we are?
Missing option: Only if every other crewmember... (Score:3, Funny)
...was an attractive young woman and one of my responsibilities was to "provide seed material" for the next generation of explorers.
Only if... (Score:4, Funny)
It's all about the costs (Score:4, Funny)
They have the billions needed to create a craft to take a crew to Mars and back, but found the cost of licensing enough music and video to keep the crew entertained during the journey prohibitive.
Phillip.
Re:As long as... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No Natives to exploit and enslave ... (Score:4, Informative)
This is not at all true. In the Americas very little enslavement was done. They Europeans did, however, trade with them (hardly exploitation) rob them, and later rounded them up and killed them. For the most-part, the settlers would have been better off if they had not had to compete with the natives for land.
The slavery thing (as it was done in the Americas) only really works if you take the slaves a long way from their homes so they they have no real hope of escape. Obviously, that would not work on natives, since they know the land better than you do and have a family out there somewhere waiting for them. That's why all the slaves came from Africa (or Europe if you're talking about wage slaves/indentured servants).
Re:No Natives to exploit and enslave ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Not exactly.
Among other things, slaves could and did escape to Native American nations, where they were frequently taken in and became respected members. In the most notable case, the Seminole nation was a combination of the Creek nation and escaped African slaves from Georgia and the Caribbean. Which was precisely why the US government was so keen on fighting the Seminoles.
Re:No Natives to exploit and enslave ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Importation of slaves from Africa only came about after the Spanish had worked most of the natives in Central America to death in silver mines. Read de las Casas; he posited that because equatorial Africa was even hotter than Mexico, imported slaves might suffer a lower mortality rate. The Spanish did not give a damn whether the natives had families they could run to; as long as they could be followed and punished, it wasn't a problem. There's a whole body of records on the legal treatment of native slaves in Spanish Mexico that's really quite interesting; abused slaves could often prevail against their masters in court if they could attract the attention of an ecclesiastic court and demonstrate (or feign) Catholicism. I digress.
The British used Africans because the infrastructure for importing them was already in place and it was easier than trying to subjugate the native populace wholesale--except in the Carribean, where they quite happily used native slaves until they ran out of them. The French Carribean similarly used Africans only when they'd run out of natives, which happened quickly. Saint Domingue (Haiti) had something like a 20% annual mortality rate among its slaves.
I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that imported slaves wouldn't run away because they didn't know the land. That only works for a little while, until they've learned it. Much of the inter-island Carribean trade was carried on by unsupervised slaves in sloops (for example Olaudah Equiano,) and in the American Deep South, slaves that could disappear into the woods for a few days and return with fresh game were actively valued for that skill. Hunting and trapping skills could add a significant premium to a slave's selling price. Slaves stayed because they hoped to earn their manumission, because they feared being caught, because their families were with them, because they hoped for improvement in their conditions, or sometimes even because their lives weren't all that bad. (Slavery was not the same everywhere, everywhen, or even under different masters in the same place and time.) When conditions did favor running away, African slaves were just as quick to do so as native slaves; witness the black Seminoles of Florida and the Maroons of Jamaica.
Re:No Natives to exploit and enslave ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which brings me to my second point... Europeans brought workers with them, both in the form of European indentured servants and slaves from Africa. I'm not a historian, but I have read a fair amount about colonial America, and I've never heard of mass enslavement of the American Indian population. Carribean Indians, yes, but in North America, no. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
One of the theories advanced by books like 1491 [wikipedia.org] is that the residents of the Americas were largely wiped out by European diseases like smallpox, measles, and pneumonia, which left a cultivated landscape behind. Cultivars like maize, beans, and squash, which were the result of thousands of years of Indian breeding, were quickly assimilated into colonial diets. So yes, the Europeans had it easy, but not for the reason you think-- it was because they essentially stepped into the place of a human population that had already carved out a comfortable ecological niche over a very long period of time.
Your point is further refuted by the fact that at some point some group of humans were the first to colonize the New World. You know, the people who eventually became "natives." They were successful without a "native" population to enslave.
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We should put more effort into synthetic biology for Mars applications so there *are* natives to exploit then.
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"Find me a planet with some soft, cuddly domesticatable critters, and then we're talking ..."
That's why we should send machines, many machines, with their rapid development cycles that transports designed for humans cannot match, to pave the way.
We must have a vast amount of tech to thrive in a permanently hostile environment, so sending tourists early is a misdirection of effort.
Send the domestic machines for generations, the meat tourists later.
Missing Option: (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, but only if I can fly there without having my junk groped by a TSA screener.
Late-Breaking News from the Council (Score:5, Funny)
The Council of Elders regrets to announce that its worst fears are being realized. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, issued the following pronouncement:
INVASION!
Podmates, our world's situation is grave. As we have feared, at last it has come [slashdot.org] to this [slashdot.org]. The Blue Planet is now formally recruiting soldiers for the invasion of our fair planet.
Your Council has been warning of the perversions and abominations from the Blue Planet for at least three years [slashdot.org], and now it appears our greatest fears are being realized. The mechanized terrors we have faced down so bravely were but the harbingers of a wave of invaders - invaders from a species of FREEDOM FONDLERS!
OUR WORLD SAYS "NO." Our red skies say NO to the toxic oxygenated soup they breathe. Our red rocks say NO to a world so scorchingly hot that three quarters of it is drowned in molten dihydrogen monoxide. But most of all, our blue gelsacs say NO! NO to a planet whose concept of power is reliant upon the fondling of gelsacs that are not only pink, but in proportion to their bodies, tiny and fuzzy.
When a Junior Defense Technician 1521217 [slashdot.org] suggested that our IPBM defense systems would shoot the invaders out of the sky "long before their arrival", K'Breel acknowledged that despite the occasional success of the IPBM defense systems, there was still a bewildering array of robotic invaders both on the surface, in orbit, and en route from the Blue World, and promptly had the contents of JDT1521217's gelsacs extracted into a series of 100mL containers, placed inside a 1L Freedom Baggie, and delivered to the via IPBM to the head of the Blue World's Gelsac Inspection Corps [imgur.com].
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I detect some ambiguity here. It would sometimes be crappy compared to getting laid by your wife, or be crappy compared to sometimes getting laid by your wife?