Which part?
Well ok then. I did not know that.
For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2019
So the Apollo astronauts could have walked to Mars? That’s some weird topology. Woulda saved a lot of time and effort. But we would have missed all those cute rover missions.
Wow. I’d better revise my lectures. I have been telling my students Mars is a long way from here. I guess that’s just another example of one of those things that Donald knows that other people don’t.
In case anyone is wondering on the timing of this apparent non sequitur, apparently just 72 minutes before Trump’s tweet, Fox Business host Neil Cavuto said that NASA is “refocusing on the moon, the next sort of quest, if you will, but didn’t we do this moon thing quite a few decades ago?”
I sometimes wonder if the people at Fox hold contests to see what bizarre shit they can provoke Trump to tweet about. Like if Fox & Friends went on a tirade about why Americans are eating all this Greek yogurt instead of good old American yogurt from American cows on American farms, would Trump announce new tariffs on Greece that morning? (Spoiler: yes.)
From whom or what does he think Mars needs defending? Or is ‘defence’ a thing he wants to build around Mars to keep those illegal aliens away?
Imagine what a surreal place Trump’s psyche must be.
(I know, I know. Not for the faint of heart. Never fear: I’ve read Clive Barker! )
I don’t think Trump’s psyche is scary-surreal, I think it’s just bleakly empty and BORING.
He’s not special, he’s just that boring windbag guy we all know from the bus or the plane or the line at the post office or the holiday dinner or whatever it is. He’s pig ordinary and his mind is a howling desert of empty. He combines boring-empty with a profound love of hearing himself talk.
It’s a terrible mismatch, loving to hear yourself talk and having a completely vacant mind. It never stops anyone though.
Meanwhile…is it weird having a president who spends much of his time annotating whatever Fox News said an hour ago? Yes, it is. Very.
Boring and, I think, deeply deeply unhappy. He can never get enough of anything: he’s a millionaire who had to pretend he was a billionaire, a famous man who had to have MORE people talking about him, etc. But not in a motivational, man’s-reach-must-exceed-his-grasp kind of way; there’s no sense that there’s anything that really pleases him.
He doesn’t seem to have any genuine affection for any of his wives or kids. He’s admitted to essentially having no friends. He has evidenced no intellectual curiosity about anything. He doesn’t appear to have any fondness for art or music or anything cultural. He doesn’t drink alcohol. He likes food, but doesn’t have any taste or style or culinary sophistication. I suppose he likes having sex with porn stars, but even there, with his germophobia, I wonder if it isn’t more about the macho desire to possess a woman than any real pleasure in the act. (To adapt a phrase, he probably enjoys “having fucked” more than fucking.)
The one exception, I guess, is golf, and even there, how hollow must his pleasure be if he has to cheat? Again, it seems to be more about his desire to dominate others (*you’re* not the club champion, *I* am, even though I didn’t show up for the tournament) than enjoyment of the sport. One suspects that even election night was more an “oh fuck, what do I do now?” moment than one of genuine delight.
If he weren’t such an awful, hateful, vindictive man who’s caused genuine harm to many over the years, I’d almost feel sorry for him. At the very least, I’ve been able to console myself over these last couple of years that he’s already being punished. He lives in a self-made prison of fake gold.
I’ll drink to that!
Oh, I’m sure his thoughts are duller than dry toast.
But imagine the landscape. The moon is part of Mars. Dictators are warm and friendly guys.
gold-plate everywhere, except for the empty desert that is the vast world beyond his ken. (Tumbleweeds and cactus west of Manhattan, relieved by the occasional golf course, luxury hotel, and stadium full of adoring fans.)
WTF, how could my astronomy lecturers overlook such an amazing fact!
I’m not convinced by this tweet that Trump thinks the Moon is physically a part of Mars. I suspect he was clumsily saying that the project of going to Mars involved also going to the Moon. I doubt he understands how that might work, and I am open to the possibility that he thinks the Moon itself is part of Mars, but for now I’m chalking this one up to crappy command of language.
True, but we are riding his clunky phrasing because he’s a fuckwit that deserves only mockery and jail time, and I can’t provide the latter.
Sackbut, when you are too literal, you spoil all the fun.
I assume you’re for some reason excluding his precious Ivanka, as if anything he’s got too much genuine affection for her.
Oh gawd, I forgot Ivanka’s place in Trump’s psyche. OK, O, you gotta admit THAT’S scary!
Sackbut, as I understand it, some people have conjectured that, but there really isn’t any reason to do so.
You wouldn’t build your Mars spacecraft on The Moon; what would be the point? You’d be hauling the parts farther than if you just built it from a space station in LEO or GEO, and also dragging them down a gravity well only to have to launch back up when completed. The Moon isn’t really a good testing ground for Martian habitats or vehicles because the conditions (gravity, atmosphere, surface material) are a lot different. And I don’t think we have any reason to think we can source any useful materials from the Moon.
Good point re Ivanka, although it just kind of reinforces my point. Trump doesn’t seem like a proud father who’s pleased about her “success”; instead, it seems that he’s just frustrated that she’s the one woman he isn’t allowed to possess. (I mean, there are of course billions of women who are repulsed by Trump and would reject him, but he doesn’t believe that to be the case.)
I very much doubt that Trump is unhappy, deeply or otherwise. It’s tempting to project how *we’d* feel if we constantly had to pretend or lie or compensate for various lacks. But I think Ophelia has it right: Trump is bleakly empty and boring. So much so that he’s very well satisfied with himself. He doesn’t give himself any high standards he fails to meet. He sets the standard.
I expect he put the moon and Mars together because they’re rocket-going-to things, as opposed to bombs-going-down things or brainy- heads-talking things. He’s not complicated.
I think he might be shallowly unhappy though. She said eagerly, hoping it’s true. He’s so constantly dissatisfied – so regularly having temper tantrums. He doesn’t feel it deeply but it does appear that it interferes with his enjoyment of the chandeliers and the piece of ass daughter and the table full of Big Macs.
It’s funny to laugh at his clumsy wording, and Trump certainly is stupid, but even he is not so stupid as to think the moon is part of Mars.
Trump probably heard about something like this:
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0609/Moon-first-then-Mars-Congress-moves-to-shift-space-priorities
…then attempted to put it in his own words. Unfortunately, he has very bad words. The worst words.
As a liberal,sorry, “libtard,“, I think the worst person ever to lead a family on a mission to Mars is Trump. And his family. Quick, before the Russians!
As a human, I think that Trump and his family would be the ideal pioneers for a manned trip to Mars. Just load them up, launch, then switch off communications and giggle because nobody taught the Trumps how to pilot the craft.
Surely with his best brain he knows that? A stable genius should be able to pilot a spacecraft – child’s play. Just make sure they pack enough covfefe.
@Screechy, #16
Hm… I think moon missions would be good for training, though, and for ironing out the bugs in the much more sophisticated, craft, equipment and missions needed to get to Mars. The moon is a better Mars simulator than the Earth in most important respects, even though it is very far from perfect.
The thing that strikes me most about Trump’s tweet (apart from the crappy phrasing) is that he obviously sees going to Mars as simply a thing that will make him look great, even though it ain’t happening on his watch and very likely not in his lifetime. He doesn’t see it as an accomplishment of human kind, just as a prize. He doesn’t see it as having a purpose such as increasing scientific and engineering knowledge, just as something he can say he did first (even though he would have done exactly nothing, even if such a mission went ahead while he was “in charge”).
That’s an appalling reason to do something like going to Mars. Even though the main purposes of the moon landings were political, much sciencing, engineering and learning was done. Arguably they led to useful products down on the ground. Trump doesn’t care about any of that, he’s all about the “pfft, we’ve already been to the moon, let’s go to the SUN next!”
At night, obviously.
@Skelletor(14) & Screechy (#17):
I’m not convinced either that Trump has genuine affection for Ivanka or that he doesn’t see her as a possession.
His “piece of ass” comment was definitely creepy however it’s interpreted but my guess is that he was just saying “look at me, I’ve got the best (by which I mean best piece of ass) daughter.”
Emphasis on the “got”.
I vote we send a manned expedition to the Sun, with the entire Trump family on board to try to establish a colony on the surface of the sun.
Raise your hands if you are in favor.
iknklast, I would be in favour, but I fear that the bloated ball of hot gas might be too much and cause the sun to go supernova.