Plenty to Do at Home

NASA SHUTTLE PROGRAM FINISHED!
Headlines made us sound diminished.
Russians, though, are glad to fly us,
Round-trip space fare being sumptuous.
Soviets no more, they’re colleagues,
Scientists, not full of intrigues.

Forty years ago they trailed us;
Astronauts had trod Moon’s surface.
Armstrong’s giant step for mankind
Meant no longer were we be-hind.
Jealousy the Kremlin now nursed.
(Cosmonauts had circled Earth first.)

Home we came with chips from boulders,
Second fiddle off our shoulders.
Richer is the Earth in sodium.
That known, what else? We said, well, um,
More potassium’s in our dirt.
Fundamentally, Moon’s inert.

What’s the point in our returning?
So much more is NASA learning
Running tests aboard the Station
Crewed by every high-tech nation.
Antioxidants and bone loss,
Sunspot-radiation chaos.

Colonies on Mars make less sense.
Distances at best are im-mense.
What on Earth could we accomplish?
Population dips? That’s foolish.
Outposts bubble-covered? Ersatz!
We’d do better sending robots.

If we still want Martian desert,
Since it isn’t worth the effort,
Why not think instead Sahara?
Right at home there’s always Utah.
Basic means, I sum up breezily:
Breathing’s bound to come more easily.