The last couple of days was nothing but jubilation at NASA/JPL after the landing of the rover Curiosity on Mars. President Obama congratulated scientists on the occasion by stating:
The successful landing of Curiosity — the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet — marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future.”
However, the atmosphere changed dramatically this morning. As JPL scientists came to work, they were perplexed to be greeted by a group of noisy animal rights protestors at the entrance to the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, California.
Michael Bunkie, from Stop Alien Exploitation Now, told a group of reporters gathered at the scene that:
These experiments have been done before and nothing came out of them. How many times do we have to land on Mars to just look at rocks? I mean, all of them look the same! We already have space junk on Mars. Why do we need more? This is clearly duplicative research done at the taxpayer expense and it must stop.”
Mr. Bunkie said he will FOIA every employee at NASA to obtain more information on what he called “an outrageous waste of resources.”
Dr. Maximus Ego, a retired physician and long-time scientific advisor to Bunkie, added:
“There is really nothing we can learn on Mars that will help humans. Chaos theory and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle guarantee that even if life originated first on Mars, nothing we learn about its evolutionary history will be applicable to us. I have published a 300-page long proof of this obvious statement (available from Amazon for $12). After all, they are Martians and we are humans. Isn’t this obvious to NASA and its so-called scientists?”
When asked about the potential benefits of the research claimed by the space agency Dr. Ego added:
Gimme a break! This is clearly curiosity-driven research. Nothing else, nothing more. They even named the rover ‘Curiosity’! It is unacceptable for them to keep misleading the public by saying the questions at hand have any significance for advancing well-being on Earth. This type of research is worse than the discovery of the Higgs Boson!”
As JPL scientists quickly walked past, Dr. Ego ran after them screaming “I challenge you to a debate! Come on, I challenge you to a debate! Do you know what a hypothesis is? Do you?!”
Meanwhile, Rick Bungled, of the Alliance for Microbial Ethics, stood by silently holding a sign that read “How like us are they?” When asked about its meaning Mr. Bungled explained:
How can we be invading Mars when we know there is a chance there might be life there? We must give these hypothetical organisms the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are sentient and conscious life forms just like us. For humans to gratuitously invade other planets is nothing more than a sign of our decadence. We have already destroyed Earth and now we are going to destroy the rest of the Universe. Humans are nothing but evil monsters (except me, of course). The Universe would be a better place if we all killed ourselves (I mean, if you killed yourselves).”
Nearby, Dr. Andrew Smoothtalk, from the Humane Planetary Society, said his organization held a much more moderate position.
“Of course we support science. But we are now in the 21st century and have developed advanced computers, such as IBM’s Watson which can defeat you at Jeopardy. Clearly, we have the technology to simulate the origin of the solar system. We could send a virtual rover to a simulated Mars and explore simulated life in this simulated planet. We could even give scientists 100 bonus points for a good landing! Given these new methods, which these NASA scientists are completely unaware of, we think time has come for NASA to switch these type of space exploration with more cost-effective methods than studying the real thing” Waving out a piece of paper he pulled form his pocket he exclaimed “Here, I have with me a pledge that NASA can sign which already counts with the support of about 800 Raelians.”
NASA/JPL reacted to the criticism by circulating an email to the press this morning stating that they have serious and important work to do and are not planning on wasting precious time in responding to the activist’s allegations.
A masked activist, after being told of the NASA statement, said the activist will continue their relentless work to make space exploration stop “by all means necessary” — and walked away with a Molotov cocktail under his arm. “To educate the neighbors” — he clarified. Mr. Bungled, standing next to him, sighed deeply and explained that “the continued refusal by scientists to engage with activists can only lead to violent actions by the underground. Don’t tell us we didn’t warn you.”
Disclaimer: Although this may look like a real story you might have read over the past year or two, it is in fact satire. Any resemblance to actual living persons is…err…purely coincidental and not to be taken (too) seriously.
Speaking of Research
Speaking of Research 
Who the heck is Andrew?
andrew you really need to start publishing some sound data instead of running a website to have a go a animal right campaigners, grow up and stop videoing yourself in front of the mirror, ready for your next ego news report, tell me what qualification you have apart from mr ego, please,
I am not here either! What does a cat have to do to be on the internet these days? I was left on my own to run a website for goodness sake!
Dear Jerry,
Thank you for your comment. We appreciate that you are disappointed that you were not satirized in the above post, but due to the high volume of strong candidates for satirization we were unable to offer you a position on this occasion.
We will keep your details on file, and should you say incite or encourage violence again we will ensure that your role in animal rights extremism is fully acknowledged.
Yours sincerely.
Speaking of Research
You guys are pathetic. I explicitly called for scientists to be killed and I don’t even get even mentioned in this article? Am I not worth of satire any more? What about Pam? She has an annoying squeaky voice! Why didn’t you mention her? Your choices reveal how poor your taste in picking animal right extremists.
You are wrong. This is too close to reality to be called “parody”.
It is true, they refuse to debate me. Let me make my offer more attractive. I offer to debate these pseudo-scientists at NASA Headquarters, with their own security and people. Never mind. I will spare you the agony. They will never accept. Why? Because they know studying rocks on Mars has nothing to do with advancing human knowledge. If they had the data to show I am wrong they would simply show it to us, but they don’t. It is all about the money!
It is probably true that most animal rights activists would probably oppose space exploration. Take for example Peter Singer. He questions why you should buy bottled water when the same money could feed a child in Africa for a month. Using the same logic, I do not see how he could support any type of basic research, including space exploration.
This is priceless.