Run Mars.....RUN!!!

[Playinghardball]

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Saw this on Facebag earlier...

Hilarious!!!!

[lpbk2713]

2. There goes the neighborhood.

[Orrex]

3. I will never forget that time we tried to blow up the moon

Without even asking Her permission first.

[reACTIONary]

5. OK, OK, I know this is a not-so-serious thread...

... and I'm being a bit too prickly, but we DID NOT try to "blow up the moon" !!11!!

We crashed a spacecraft into the side of a crater, which sent up a plume of dust, which was observed by a following spacecraft to measure water content. It irritates me SO much when this is reported as an attempt to "blow up the moon"

OK, I feel better now.

[Orrex]

6. That's EXACTLY how I would expect someone to justify our attack on the moon

Shame! Shame!

[reACTIONary]

8. OK, How about this...

It was for her own good!!! Honest!!!

[Cooley Hurd]

7. You're all forgetting about Moonbase Alpha, and the nuke dump...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_1999

The premise of Space: 1999 centres on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, Earth's Space Research Centre on the Moon, following a scientific cataclysm. Humanity had been storing its nuclear waste in vast disposal sites on the far side of the Moon. Prefaced by wild emissions of an unknown form of electromagnetic radiation, the accumulated waste reaches critical mass and, on 13 September 1999, detonates in a massive thermonuclear explosion. The force of the blast propels the Moon like an enormous booster rocket, hurling it out of Earth orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, thus stranding the 311 personnel stationed on Alpha. The runaway Moon, in effect, becomes the "spacecraft" on which the protagonists travel, searching for a new home. During their interstellar journey, the Alphans encounter an array of alien civilizations, dystopian societies, and mind-bending phenomena previously unseen by humanity.

The concept of traveling through space to encounter aliens and strange worlds is similar to Lost in Space and Star Trek, although the programme's visual aesthetic was heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey. In another nod to Kubrick's film, the first series of Space: 1999 explored mystical and metaphysical themes, and offered little explanation of plot points. The inhabitants of Alpha were unwilling travelers, and represented present-day Earthmen cast adrift in a vast, unexplainable universe where Earth-bound logic and laws of nature no longer operated. Several episodes hinted that the Moon's journey was influenced (and perhaps initiated) by a "mysterious unknown force", which was guiding the Alphans toward an ultimate destiny.

The second series used more simplified "action-oriented" plots (à la Star Trek), with a deliberate aim at the American audience, and there was no further mention of the "mysterious unknown force".

[reACTIONary]

9. Are you a...

"first season" mysterious force Euro Spacer, or a "second season" action oriented Amero Spacer?

[yawnmaster]

14. That plume of dust sure looked a lot like what happens when a bomb goes off! eom

[reACTIONary]

21. True! Also a meteor impact. (eom)

[yawnmaster]

22. meteors are natural, bombs are not! eom

[yawnmaster]

13. Luckily, we weren't successful, although who knows what damage that bomb did...

to the moon.
I'm sure the site of attack will take millions of years to recover.

[NuclearDem]

4. Yes!

[rurallib]

10. this could explain the universe expanding

[RC]

12. Yeah, to get away for us.

There is a Groucho Marx quoit in there somewhere.

[obxhead]

11. Love it!

[tclambert]

15. I like the Moon.

[tblue37]

19. I love lamp. nt

[Nye Bevan]

16. Hopefully one day we will be able to terraform Mars, giving it an Earth-like atmosphere,

like they did on "Total Recall".

[First Speaker]

17. I suspect, the way things are going, that we'll be "terraforming" Earth instead...

...to give it an "Earth-like" atmosphere...

[DRoseDARs]

18. "Total Recall" is a *horrible* example of terraforming...

Please read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) for a much more realistic, believable, and enjoyable story. Morgan Freeman had at one point declared he wanted to make a movie of it, but sadly most studios only want to make schlocky boom-boom shoot-em-up scifi films.

[highplainsdem]

20. Reminds me of SF writer J. G. Ballard's comment on the first moon landing:

"If I were a Martian, I'd start running now."