You have China to thank for America’s impending, inevitable, and doubtless panicked resurgence of interest in space exploration. The idea of a successful Chinese lunar probe mission will make some people here very upset.
In all fairness, if I was going to be sealed in a can and boosted into friggin’ outer space at a velocity approaching 17,000 miles per hour, I’d want to down a couple of Jack and Cokes before liftoff myself. It still doesn’t qualify as a best practice, though it seems to be more common [...]
Three: Hope nothing particularly tragic happens with today’s scheduled space shuttle mission.
Two: A reminder of why the shuttle should be shelved.
One: Cross your fingers.
Zero.
Blastoff.