An announcement late Friday that NASA's LCROSS lunar probe churned up at least 24 gallons of water when it splashed down in a dark Moon crater last month is good news for astronauts and lunar explorers.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- An announcement late Friday that NASA's LCROSS lunar probe churned up at least 24 gallons of water when it splashed down in a dark Moon crater last month is good news for astronauts and lunar explorers.
But I can't help wondering if the discovery won't eventually turn out to have earthly commercial applications as well.
People are already willing to fork out $6 a bottle to buy Berg bottled iceberg water from Newfoundland and $2 a pop for Fiji artesian well water from the South Pacific. I think there's enough snob appeal down here on Mother Earth to prompt a number of conspicuous consumers to be the first in their gated communities to buy bottled water imported from the Moon.
Marketing executives are probably already working on a name for it.
Lunar Dew?
Tang-Queray?
Crater-Aide?
Once a bottled moon water market is launched, moon beer is sure to follow.
Look for Rolling Moon Rock, Lunar Corona, Aldrin's Buzzwater and Lunar Lift-Off at better legal beverage outlets everywhere.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- An announcement late Friday that NASA's LCROSS lunar probe churned up at least 24 gallons of water when it splashed down in a dark Moon crater last month is good news for astronauts and lunar explorers.
But I can't help wondering if the discovery won't eventually turn out to have earthly commercial applications as well.
People are already willing to fork out $6 a bottle to buy Berg bottled iceberg water from Newfoundland and $2 a pop for Fiji artesian well water from the South Pacific. I think there's enough snob appeal down here on Mother Earth to prompt a number of conspicuous consumers to be the first in their gated communities to buy bottled water imported from the Moon.
Marketing executives are probably already working on a name for it.
Lunar Dew?
Tang-Queray?
Crater-Aide?
Once a bottled moon water market is launched, moon beer is sure to follow.
Look for Rolling Moon Rock, Lunar Corona, Aldrin's Buzzwater and Lunar Lift-Off at better legal beverage outlets everywhere.
Brewers may also be able to attract deep-pocketed light beer lovers by selling suds containing reduced-gravity Moon water, with one-sixth the pull of terrestrial beers.
But I suspect whatever Moon crater water products are eventually sold on Earth will first have to go through an extensive filtering process - to get rid of the green cheese aftertaste.
***
As I pound out this disposable prose, the Mountaineers are battling it out with Cincinnati, whose head coach, Brian Kelly, to me, bears a startling resemblance to another newsmaker.
Given the right ticked-off expression in the right lighting, I could have sworn former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs had had found work on the Bearcats' sidelines as the anchor of their coaching staff.
According to a satire last week in The Onion, the immigrant-unfriendly Dobbs allegedly quit his CNN job because he was about to have been exposed for having entered the country illegally from Mexico 48 years ago as Luis Miguel Salvador Aguila Dominguez.
***
Friday the 13th was an unlucky day for former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for taking bribes -- including $90,000 in cold, hard cash found in piecrust boxes in his freezer.
Prediction: Headlines using the words "frozen assets," "coldly calculated crime," "time in the cooler," "crusty criminal" and "stealing a piece of the American pie" and "13 years to chill out," and a "chilling effect on bribery."
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