Once upon a time in New Jersey, the space program was a big deal. We anticipated each launch and television was interrupted both when they went up and came down. We knew the names of the astronauts. They were national heroes. Kids wanted to grow up to be them. Buzz Aldrin “danced with the stars” because of such notoriety. Now, not so much.

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I had no idea we were sending a rover to Mars until I saw online that we had landed. When I saw how much we were paying for the craft, I wanted to send them to the moon! (Alice)

 

The Mars rover Curiosity is an unmanned planet crawler with an array of sophisticated cameras, a “rocker bogie” suspension, robotic arm, 2 gigs of flash memory, a rock vaporizing lazer, (how cool would it be to have one of those?) a plutonium powered fuel system and it operates by remote control from millions of miles away. It also has a life expectancy of about 23 months.

 

What would you pay for such a toy?  How about 2.6 billion dollars!!! Is this trip really necessary at a time when we could put the money to so much better use in this country? Do you really see us commuting back and forth to Mars in the near future? We put a man on the moon in 1969, when was the last time we were there? But if you were going to send something to Mars, say a care package from New Jersey, something to let our Martian friends know  that we’re here and we’re coming what would you send?

 

I posed this question Wednesday night on New Jersey 101.5 and this is the list we came up with. Please feel free to add to it because there are definitely some things missing…

 

Things we’d send to Mars from New Jersey in no particular order:

Pork Roll

Salt Water Taffy

24 hour diners

Bruce Willis movies

Sham Wow

Toll booths

Jughandles

Red Tags for license plates

Beach badges

Politicians

Governor Christie

Cast of Jersey Shore

Red Light Cameras

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