Monkey Gone To Heaven

Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun...and explore the cosmos I guess. You combine that with politicians who love to rally people behind pointless crap, and you get things such as the great Space Race. Of course, landing on the moon is how we avenged Kennedy's death and ended the Cold War in 1969, so there may be something to said for space travel.

Now we need to prepare ourselves for Space Race 2: The Race for Mars (the subtitle "Return of Jafar" didn't do well in the focus groups). We all remember Dubya making some proclamation that we're going to make it to Mars some time in the distant near future, and now it looks like the Russians are responding. They just recently announced that they're going to be attempting a precursor to a manned mission, and sending a monkey to the red planet. Big whoop, right? I thought so as well, until I read the last paragraph.

The Institute said a robot would accompany the first primate to Mars to feed and look after the ape.

Mr Mikvabia said: "The robot will feed the monkey, will clean up after it. Our task will be to teach the monkey to co-operate with the robot."

I smell a sitcom!