NASA scientists were stunned and slightly nauseous this week to find the face of US Senator Ted Kennedy unexpectedly present in the most recent feeds from their Spirit rover, one of NASA’s two remote-controlled toys currently canvassing the Martian surface. Once they’d recovered from the pain and confusion of seeing the senator’s visage cruelly larger-than-life on the big screen, however, speculation erupted among engineers as to what this means about the red planet’s mysterious history.
“This is huge,” explained mission commander Emeril Welch. “Bigger than Ted Kennedy even, if you can imagine that. This is incontrovertible evidence of life on Mars, and booze.”
Once only a controversial theory, this latest evidence all but proves that Mars once contained enough booze and loose women to support the Massachusetts senator. The news is sweet vindication for the few fringe scientists who have argued for years that the red planet once played host to representative democracy, and floozies.
“Ted Kennedy might have been able to get by on Mars without water, but no way is this a dry planet in the alcohol sense,” stated Welch. “We think it’s only a matter of time before one of the rovers uncovers evidence of shot glasses and used condoms.”
The discovery is a boon for scientists of all stripes, who had previously been embarrassingly excited about finding trace evidence of long-gone water inside rocks on the Martian surface. This latest finding confirms that Mars once contained not only various forms of water and club soda, but also a virtual minibar of alcoholic concoctions.
Preliminary drilling in Kennedy’s face has uncovered evidence of whiskey, vodka and scotch, with various crags in the face showing evidence of large quantities of rum once existing on the Martian surface. Such discoveries represent a quantum leap for NASA scientists, who have gone from scouring the Martian surface for faint evidence of microbes to speculating about the Martian bar scene in mere days.
How Kennedy got to Mars, or perhaps came to Earth from Mars, is another question entirely, and one scientists will explore after they’ve answered the burning question of whether or not a Martian could get drunk off the dust from Kennedy’s face. Conspiracy theories have already surfaced suggesting some kind of drunken shuttle mishap, covered up jointly by NASA and the Massachusetts senator. These theories have put a new spin on the original controversial “face” on Mars, first spotted by the Viking Orbiter 1 in 1976 and now thought to possibly be the visage of Kennedy’s female shuttle companion, presumably killed in the crash and later denied by the Kennedy family and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
These latest discoveries have put on hold cash-strapped NASA’s plans to charge $5 a minute for web surfers to drive the Mars rover from their home computers, using keyboard commands or supported peripheral joysticks. This would seemingly put an end to heated online debate over whether the rover would accept quarters or would require special tokens. Early indications are that the online community is “pretty bummed” at the prospect of missing out on killer games of “Tank Battle” between the rovers Spirit and Opportunity.