By Mr. Curmudgeon

“With God’s help,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “[Iranian] scientists will be sent into space and will observe the universe from there.” He described the suborbital flight of the Kavoshgar-3 – that contained a capsule holding one rat, two turtles and several worms – as an “unparallel” technological achievement. It’s clear Ahmadinejad needs to read more than the Koran. All the critters mentioned above (with the exception of Ahmadinejad) were sent into space over forty years ago.

With America scheduled to halt all manned space flight missions when the Space Shuttle fleet is retired this spring, the field of space exploration is left wide open. President Obama doesn’t believe America needs to maintain a presence in the high frontier of outer space when stimulus tax dollars are so desperately needed elsewhere – like ACORN or CounterPULSE, a gay-lesbian organization producing weekly events called “Perverts Put Out.”

In the late 1950s, the Brookings Institution produced a study that resulted in NASA’s founding. A portion of that report touched on the sociological implications that might result from humans coming in contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life:

“Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.”

Little did we know that “hope and change” would do to America what scientists once feared from E.T. On the other hand, can you imagine the damaging effect a face-to-face meeting between Ahmadinejad and advanced beings from Alpha Centauri might have? They’d annihilate life on Earth – with the exception of rats, turtles and worms.