Apollo Mission: Implausible

It is 1961, and President Barack Obama has thrown a challenge to the nation’s space program. Put a man on the moon before the decade is out! Nancy Pelosi contorts her facial muscles. She asks pointedly, “Why necessarily a man?” The president, looking quizzically at his Teleprompter, mumbles, “Er, it’s supposed to be a manned mission, right?”

Later that night, Harry Reid gazes up at the sky, and wonders if, since the moon may be made of cheese, Congress might not as well send up some pork, to complement the cheese. He wonders, too, what the senators from Wisconsin would think of his plan. Mr. Reid, like Alice in Wonderland, does a lot of wondering. But not Mr. Emanuel. The chief-of-staff is certain that, somewhere in that half-million-mile journey, there is bound to be a crisis, and thus an opportunity for the administration to advance its agenda. Excitedly he takes out his checklist, and the roll of toilet paper nearly strangles him.

The government wastes no time (“Is that possible?” Harry Reid wonders) in initiating the president’s plan, and in five years the Environmental Impact Study is finished, all the theoretical hydrocarbons counted, the hypothetically foul emissions deodorized, the seagull population at Cape Canaveral polled for its opinions. Now all that’s left to do is the construction of… “Why not a submarine?” asks Jim Webb, of Virginia, a coastal state with shipyards. Harry Reid, incredulous, yet clearly awed, wonders, “Is he thinking of even more pork?”

In 1969, a giant contrivance named “Titanic II” lifts off from its launch pad in Florida. Naturally it is made of biodegradable material. To satisfy various constituencies, the rocket comes in fifty stages, the last one being a piece of pork on a skewer, courtesy of the state of Nevada. For fuel, the rocket burns the compressed embers of ten trillion dollars incinerated in the Capitol’s basement furnace. Will it reach the moon? “Let’s hope so!” cheers Mr. Obama, proud of his legacy.