To the Moon!

The United States, as a country, doesn't do anything cool in space. All we do is send random people up, make them fix satellites, maybe send along some baby rats to see how screwed up they get. This is incredibly boring.

We need a Moon base. For, like, science and stuff. The main problem is that it'll cost a lot to send people up and down, but if anyone stays more than 3 months or so they'll start to atrophy weirdly and won't be able to live on Earth. People would have to be ferried back and forth at incredible expense if we didn't want them to become deformed.

Hence my brilliant idea: a Moon base manned almost entirely by convicted pedophiles. With that Megan's Law (which, incidentally, wouldn't have saved Megan) they have to announce their presence whenever they move, so even if they're rehabilitated they're screwed for life. I'm not sure if it's only pedophiles or just any prosecuted pervert who has to advertise where they're living, but if other sex offenders also are in the same boat, I see no problem with sending them up as well.

So we have classes at prisons and halfway houses, and if they can learn a Moon-applicable trade, we send them up. Obviously we have scientists on the Moon as well, at least for the beginning and for building the base. The pedophiles will just be able to run the day-to-day aspects of the Moon base: keeping things working, fixing dents and adjusting temperature and pressure. They could grow hydroponic food and stuff. And we could send them movies and books and magazines, because they'd be doing a valuable service. Actually, they'd be on the Moon, so I don't see why we couldn't send them the government's captured child pornography, which would be going to waste anyway. We could send them captured drugs as well! This would be much less wasteful.

If there was ever an accident on the Moon base and one of the pedophiles saved a bunch of scientists from an explosion or something, he'd be a hero. Heroic Moon Base Pedophile Bob Jones. I think that's the name of my next RPG character. Anyway, they wouldn't be prisoners up there. We'd only take people who had finished their sentences. They would just be people who couldn't get a fresh start anywhere else. Plus, because they were doing their country a dangerous service, maybe we could restore their right to vote. It'd be cool if candidates had to worry about carrying the Moon vote.

My friend Joel said my Moon base is a bad idea, because he wants to go to the Moon some day but he doesn't want to molest children. I told him that duh, not everyone would be a sex offender up there. There would be scientists, techs and doctors, and anything else we couldn't find a pedophile qualified for. Joel just has to learn computers real good, so the government will send him up there and bring him back before he loses heart muscle. The civilian support staff would come and go on the Moon base, so they'd be really strong, like heavyworlders, up there and hence safe from the Moon perverts.

The Moon base would end up being pretty huge, so we'd have to design it so it looked like something from Earth. Maybe a big face, or, if we were strapped for cash, the Pepsi logo.

Sean said that by manning the Moon base with pedophiles and assorted perverts, families wouldn't want to bring their children up there and it would ruin the Moon tourism.

Well, first of all I don't think children should even be on the Moon. Growing bones and all that. Of course, I don't think children should be given high doses of experimental drugs throughout childhood either, so maybe that's just me.

Anyway, we still wouldn't send tourists up to the moon. Just techs and scientists and the occasional politician or celebrity for at least fifty years. The perverts should still wear radioactive chastity belts, like Rowdy Roddy Piper in Hell Comes to Frogtown. Not all the time, though, just if they're scaring anyone.

Space travel would finally be cheap enough for Joe Public in a couple-three generations, by which time the Moon colony would be a lot like Australia. People don't say "I'm not going to Australia! Everyone there is descended from criminal scum!" No, they just mock the Australians' accent and go on drinking import beer.

Eventually, the Moon would be a separate and equal civilization, all because of a whole lot people would rather live free in space than hunted on Earth. By that time, we wouldn't have anywhere to ship perverts anymore, but it wouldn't matter. In a couple of centuries we'll be wiring little buttons directly into everyone's pleasure centers anyway, so the bored and lonely can spend their weekends pushing the button over and over again until they die of starvation.

It'll be fun! Plus, we'll have a Moon base!