President Obama called the Mars Curiosity Rover team today at 8am Pacific to congratulate them on the amazing feat that they accomplished on August 5. After commending their hard work and genius as a symbol of America’s space prowess and innovation, he finished his call with a sage word of wisdom we should all live by…
He said:
If you make contact with Martians, please tell me right away.
Then he added “my plate is full right now, but that certainly would be interesting.” Alien contact would certainly change the course of the election — not to talk history.
NASA’s JPL team laughed at his quip, but I’m sure they were hoping to hear something like “and we are going to give you $US1 trillion so you can take us to Mars for real” instead. Or at least “and here’s $US2.7 billion more to take a submarine robot to [Jupiter’s moon] Europa.”