What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Fooled NASA

Episode 6

When I first heard about the NASA project to look for water on the moon I was humored, because I had already been to the moon several times just as soon as I had my Morgan utility building coverted to a spacec-raft. I even built a spacesuit for Cooper. Getting a dog into a spacesuit turned out to be a difficult task, but we finally made it. He didn't enjoy the trip to the moon but really enjoyed playing ball on the moon and jumping really high. We go back every couple of weeks. The thirty minute lunar trip by MMB - Modified Morgan Building is actually faster than going by car to the veterinarian for his annual visit.

I had already searched all over the moon, including the dark side and found no significant amounts of water. So I made another trip to both poles just to be sure - nope - didn't find any. Surprisingly I did find Santa Claus at the North Pole of the moon! (Not really, just kidding.)

But then later I came up with a great practical joke of hauling water to the moon so that when they measured for water, NASA would find water there. I inflitrated their computer systems to find the exact location they planned to smash their projectile into the surface of the moon. The dust raised by the projectile would then be analyzed by a second NASA spacecraft right behind the projectile.

I began hauling several thousand gallons of water by using a railroad tanker hooked to the MMB and draining a half inch of water from the Lake Meredith reservoir in the process. The tank was insulated so the water wouldn't freeze until it got to the moon. So the water turned to a mixture of ice chunks and snow during the spray process at the lunar polar cap. I used a special netting process to be sure that no significantly sized animals were harmed in the process of getting the lake water. The last thing I need is for PETA to be on my case. Its bad enough having the federal bad boys trying to find you all the time.

But then I eXpanded the practical joke. I realized that the analyzer would be scanning for molecules besides water so I decided to add another ingredient to the lunar ice - Tang !!! I researched where to find some and found out where NASA actually had stored several hundred thousand pounds of Tang leftover from the Apollo missions. I realized it would have been far far easier to just make my own Tang using nano-factory technology, but I thought it would be more interesting to have NASA "discover" their own Tang without realizing it was theirs. So stealing half of their Tang supply from a warehouse in Alabama was accomplished in about a week including the time it took to spread it around the surface on the lunar ice layer.

I was pretty well pleased with my great practical joke BUT then I came up with an even better idea than the Tang ingredient. Why not put moonshine on the moon?!?!? I knew that the water analyzer would be able to pick up an ethyl alcohol molecule as well AND the chemical analyzer used light in the instrumentation detector process, so light=shine, moon, moonshine! Perfect!

I decided to make the alcohol on earth and then haul it to the moon. I was starting to run out of time so I stole, excuse me, borrowed another railroad car. After delivering the moonshine to the moon, I reconstructed a moonshine operation that I found in the backwoods of Alabama not far from the Tang warehouse. I thought it would be great fun to turn NASA into a branch of the ATF, (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) by having them unknowingly smash a moonshine still operation with their projectile.

So the next time you look at the moon and it appears to have a bit of orange color at the bottom, the tinge is Tang.