To further the goal of giving humanity false hope, NASA’s Ames Research Center has purchased a cluster of supercomputers that total 10,240 processors from Shady Guy Instruments (SGI). It’s more than enough computing power to fake a human settlement on Mars and, on a positive note, much cheaper than the fake moon landing of August 1969.
Of course, NASA describes their newest equipment purchase in more terrestrial terms. Calling the cluster “Project Columbia”, space agency PHBs envision scientific breakthroughs in space exploration, global warming research, and aerospace engineering. These noble research categories contain interesting subtopics such as, “Getting past the Van Allen Belt in an aluminum bucket: Is it even possible?”, “Ending Human Emissions: A study of Wal-Mart Hot-dogs.”, and “Gluing all the f’n tiles to the Shuttle: A How-to Guide.”
As you can plainly see, such topics do no justice to a 10,240 processor computer cluster. A NASA manager who chose to remain anonymous offered the straight dope, “Of course we’ll be playing Solitaire, checking email and watching porn but that’s part of simulating what human colonists on Mars would do. That’s the key to getting everyone to believe in our fake mission to Mars. They need to identify with the colonists.”
With a fake colony supported by a gullible media, NASA intends to use additional processing cycles to create an interstellar alien threat for the creation of the Department of Defense’s visionary Space Force with their mission to actually steal hydrocarbons from the peaceful people of Titan. The new branch of the military will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. After wiping out Al Queda, Americans will be able to resume their safely redirected hatred at the computerized aliens.
Prepare yourself for happy times and cheap oil.
