The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

- Randall Munroe

What does selling phone plans have to do with coordinating a manned mission to Mars?

Absolutely fuckin' nothing.

How 'bout stocking shelves at Kmart?

Not a goddamned thing.

Your security guard gig?

Still no correlation.

Do we actually believe government - the same institution that makes us homeless, when we don't pay its extortion fees, disguised as "taxes" - has this overarching plan to transform our wasted lives of servitude into a trip to the Red Planet?

Are we so naive we think, by sweatin' it out as Subway "sandwich artists," in some fucked-up, and completely invisible way, we're bringing humanity closer to colonizing one of our nearest planetary neighbors?

As we scrub toilets, at downtown office buildings, are we exuberant in our knowledge we're providing an escape plan for our kind, when Earth is no longer habitable?

Are we fuckin' high?!?

NASA - the government - is a joke, and wants nothing to do with space exploration, nor the colonization of Mars. Such is only too obvious. Cosmically, we never get anywhere, and anytime somebody discovers how we can, bureaucracy destroys their plan.

These fuckers want us trapped on this planet. If prisoners can escape, they're no longer prisoners, are they?

Ever asked yourself how we went to the Moon 40-plus years ago - during an epoch without personal computers - but now, in an age of near-instantaneous global communication, we can't go anywhere in our solar system?

How is it we were able to land on the lunar surface pre-VHS days, but in our paradigm of cloning and 3-D printing, we're stuck on Earth, traveling nowhere else?

Again, government wants you here. If you stray, they can't control you. If you realize interplanetary - as well as interstellar - travel is feasible, you're gonna demand they pump all that cash they're counterfeiting into doing so. And they'd rather spend those useless pieces of paper on perpetuating wars - wars they monetarily profit from, no less.

In a money system - which is solely about control - you ain't goin' anywhere. They'll lie to you they're working on "it," but "it" furtively means "nothing."

If you lived on a desert island, wouldn't the first thing you thought about be how to escape? Then why haven't you ever ruminated about how to get to Mars?

You do realize Earth is a desert island, from which you've no feasible evacuation plan, should this planet no longer be habitable, don't you? Say there's an errant asteroid headed our way, that will obliterate life on our blue-green speck of dust. Where are you gonna go, and how are you gonna get there? You don't even have lifeboats with which to float into the vast cosmic ocean, do you?

Why do you think that is - being it's so blatantly important?

It's because you've been brainwashed to believe that selling insurance, being Scottsdale's "number one real estate broker," or driving for Uber not only matter, but are integral to our survival, as a species. The above definitively proves they aren't, and you're simply being used up and executed in this sick pyramid scheme.

In the midst of this comes the Mars Direct program, as designed by former Martin Marrieta aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin. Bob was tired of hearing the same excuses from government, whenever he asked, "Why the fuck aren't we going to Mars?!" Thus, he and a colleague devised a viable modality for setting foot on the Red Planet.

Zubrin's methodology is known as Mars Direct, and it was heralded worldwide by laymen and fellow scientists. Even NASA claimed they loved it. Of course they hated it, since it meant a feasible escape plan for the slaves. Hence, because it's doable, they shut it down.

As Robert stated:

The question of whether we can do humans to Mars in 10 years is somewhat analogous to the question of how much rope does it take to connect two posts separated by a distance of 10 meters.

In principle, it could be done with 10 meters of rope. On the other hand, if you let the rope be tangled every which way, it could take an infinite amount of rope.

So the answer to the question is dependent upon whether you actually wanna connect the two posts, or whether you're tryin' to sell rope.

- Robert Zubrin

According to Zubrin, NASA's plans for a manned Mars mission were all about sales. Paying proprietors - those selling the technology - was the name of their game. As such, the price tag for the government's proposals were astronomical. Hence, these "blueprints" were designed to fail, since government knew nobody would foot the bill.

Mars Direct, however, went the logical route. The only question this program asked was: "How do we get to Mars the simplest way possible?"

NASA plans would've loaded the spacecraft with fuel necessary not only for the initial trip, but the return to Earth, as well.

As Zubrin asks, "Did Lewis and Clark carry all the supplies they needed, in order to make it to the west coast?" Of course not. If they had, they would've been too burdened to move by an exponential amount of provisions. Instead, they lived off resources discovered during their adventure. Zubrin suggests such is needed for Mars Direct.

Robert's big on ERVs - Earth Return Vehicles - sent sans crew to Mars, prior the manned mission. These rockets hang out on the surface of the planet, awaiting arrival of their human pilots. Within the ERVs, we've the technology to create methane oxygen - rocket fuel - from the copious quantity of carbon dioxide found on Mars. This propellant is stored in the ship's fuel tanks.

After the astronauts land, they carry out their directives, hop in one of the ERVs - with a full gas tank - fire up the engines, and head home. Again, Zubrin's Mars Direct is simple, and thereby viable.

The Hab - the spacecraft in which the crew travel from Earth - is left on Mars, vacant and awaiting a second mission. When this next sojourn happens - identical to the first - a second Hab is left on the Red Planet, and connected to that which is already there. After the third mission, the same, and so on. By adding and connecting these living quarters, you build a small city on the surface, with room for half a dozen more people - the number of humans a Hab holds - each mission.

Thus, after 10 missions, you'd have 10 Habs on Mars, all connected together, able to accommodate 60 people.

Makes ya' wonder how big the village would've been on Mars by now, if we would've sent ERVs and Habs to the Red Planet all these years, instead of useless rovers.

NASA's proposals for a manned mission to Mars involved launches from Moon bases, and space stations. Zubrin sliced through the bullshit, asserting directives calling for such are seeking those, and nothing else. "Let's pretend we're supporting a manned mission to Mars, and declare a lunar base is necessary, in order to reach the Red Planet. In actuality, though, all we really want is said base. Hence, they build our objective, and we quickly lose the 'impetus' for the Mars thing."

Stephen Paddock shoots up a concert in Vegas, killing 58 people, and millions mourn?! Vigils are created, flags are flown at half-mast, and mountains of money are accumulated on behalf of the victims. The obvious hypocrisy has been missed here.

Two and a half million people are slaughtered in Iraq - most of them innocent civilians - by U.S. and Coalition forces. Yet, throngs don't lament. Not that it matters, since it's useless symbolism - and therefore doesn't help - but flags aren't flown at half-mast for these victims. Where are the mourners for this genocide? Why aren't trillions of dollars gathered for these innocents who've suffered irrevocably?

A human life is a human life. It doesn't matter if you're erroneously labeled "American," or "Iraqi." It's another human being.

In these cases, we're talkin' 58 folk versus more than two million! As such, doesn't our moral compass seem so far off, the needle isn't just spinning wildly, it's fuckin' broken, melted and permanently lost at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle?

Again, why would you pretend to freak the fuck out over 58 people being killed, but remain indifferent about more than 2,000,000 obliterated? Don't you think you may have been brainwashed; indoctrinated into falsely believing those categorized "American" are somehow superior to those who aren't? That's gross, and you know it!

Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you've never met.

- Doug Stanhope

Nationalism is just racism with a flag.

- Peter Joseph

Why this departure from the Mars topic? If humans are gonna save themselves, much less get anywhere cosmically, this ludicrous ideology of "countries" has to go. Only when we realize we're all one, and therefore work together, will we save ourselves from ourselves.

How quickly do you think humanity would accomplish a manned mission to Mars, if we refused to adhere to this crazy "country" crap, and placed all our human efforts into traveling to the Red Planet? Seven billion people workin' on this problem?! Ten years? I'm speculating, but that seems a little long. Five? Perhaps a year? We are talkin' seven billion people working as one, here.

Why haven't Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk - founder of and former CEO of PayPal, respectively - joined forces in their quest to put humans into space? Both have taken great steps to initiate manned missions to the Moon and Mars, again respectively, but neither have broached the subject of working together. Are we that brainwashed we can't see competition - in this case, or any other - hinders us from saving ourselves in an inherently violent Universe?

Both these dudes bitch about the cost of this, and the cost of that, when it comes to space travel. That said, I guarantee the monetary system would be thrown out the window, if our backs were against the wall, and we discovered Earth would be destroyed in two years. At that point, we'd be colonizin' Mars like a motherfucker - suddenly all "brothers" and "sisters" - those nonexistent, nationalistic boundaries "magically" obliterated.

Instantaneously, we'd shit-can this whole perfidious money thing, and cost would no longer be an object, since there would be no cost. Guess what, dumb-asses? There never was. It was all in our minds.

With both these billionaires working together - telling NASA to go fuck itself - we'd be on Mars in no time. With seven billion people working on this conundrum, and no impediments - i.e. money - we'd have already been on Mars, probably terraformed it, and currently using it as either a secondary, or primary, home.

You might mistakenly believe Bezos and Musk are geniuses, but how smart can they be if they're not intelligent enough to realize the obvious? They've missed a fundamental step, by courting a system that's overtly enslaving them.

They, themselves, claim the cost of space travel is a hindrance. So remove that impediment - i.e. eradicate the monetary system - and suddenly you've eliminated the lone obstacle from not only getting into space, but saving your species.

After all, if we can't feasibly escape this desert island we call our planet, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will die, the same as you, when the shit comes down. The only difference is, they'll have a bunch of useless pieces of paper - i.e. cash - in their possession, and you won't.

This system is insane! If "authority" declared old newspapers, instead of money, were of tremendous value, suddenly that 98 year old who's stocked his home, from floor to ceiling, with moldy copies of the New York Times - would be "rich!" This, even though you'd steered clear of his house for years, due to his crazy hobby.

Stop following; stop being led. Start thinking for yourself, before it's too late.

If we don't obliterate our species from Earth, or some commonplace cosmic event doesn't take us out, future generations aren't gonna give a fuck who "won" this war, nor that. There are no winners in war. We're all losers, since we're killing our own species. People will revel, however, in the day our kind first set foot on another planet.