Xtreme Taxpayer Space Sports

Wherever invaders invade, their sports go with them. The Romans introduced bear baiting to far off Britain. Then the Brits concocted cricket and exported it to the New World, where it was turned into baseball by the Yanks who later taught it to little Japanese kids to help them forget about atomic bombs. Even Later, via Alan Shepard's moon walk in February, 1971, they brought the game of golf to Terra's moon. And that was the beginning of taxpayer-subsidized space sports. Libertarians need to beware of the future:

Los Angeles (AP) -- NASA's robot rover, Opportunity, landed on Mars, halfway around the planet from its twin, Spirit. After exploring nearby rocks, "A strange basketball-sized object nearby stood out immediately." Scientists determined it was a meteorite.

"This is what we've been waiting for," exclaimed "Slam" Duncan, the National Basketball Association's Director of Intergalactic Development. "We get Congress to appropriate a couple billion dollars to have Opportunity dribble that basketball-sized meteorite around the planet to where Spirit is, and they play the first Martian game of one-on-one!"

Frankfurt, Germany (AP) -- The European Space Agency "is basking in the glow of recent successes, which began with photographs from the Mars Express craft showing what ESA scientists said was the most direct evidence yet of water in the form of ice on the Red Planet."

"Where there's ice, there's hockey," declared a press release from the National Hockey League. "We're demanding that both the American Congress and Canada's Parliament invest a modest few trillion taxpayer dollars to set up the Martian Hockey League. The first game would be an all-star exhibition between the North and South Polar Caps. We'll use hockey puck-sized meteorites, which will hold down the costs."

Washington Post -- "Opportunity was deliberately driven into Endurance Crater in the belief that the science benefits far outweighed the risk of getting stuck in the sand."

"Ah, sand," mused an unnamed spokescrat for the International Olympic Committee. "Women's beach volleyball was the most popular event of the last summer games. I mean, those skimpy little bikini-like outfits and all. What a great pay-per-view event a Martian tournament would make. We could use millions of diverted UN oil-for-food petrodollars to set it up. Of course, we'll have to find some volleyball-sized meteorites, and add a sixth ring to our logo since Mars is a whole 'nother continent ..."

Darmstadt, Germany (AP) --A European space probe has landed on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan after a "2 1/2-hour parachute descent."

"NASA needs to start training astronaut skydivers now!" demanded the president of the International Sport Parachuting Association. "What American would dare deny funding for this? There are solar system records out there just waiting to be set. Galactic records! Universal records! Parallel Worlds records!"

BBC News - Europe's Rosetta mission has launched successfully and is now heading into space on its daring journey to chase and land on a comet. the spacecraft's long Solar System journey will take it around the Sun four times, around Mars once, the Earth three times and into the asteroid belt twice.

The Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, governing body of Formula I racing, is demanding trillions of dollars from the taxpayer funded World Bank to set up an outer space race course. "This will be better than the Monaco Grand Prix, where all we do is stuff like race up the hill from St. Devote into Casino Square, accelerate past the Hotel Metropole, take the hairpin turn at the Monte Carlo Grand Hotel, a sharp right past the fountains, open up through the tunnel, and then do it all 77 times again. How boring!"

Houston Chronicle -- NASA's $330 million Deep Impact spacecraft is designed to see what comets are made of by blasting "a crater the size of a football stadium" in the comet Tempel 1.

"And that," beamed a member of the National Football League's expansion committee, "means there's no problem for taxpayers. The city of Arlington, Texas, is paying half of the Dallas Cowboy's new $650 million stadium. So, for $330 million apiece we can blast stadiums all over the Heavens. We'll have the Haley Comets playing the Saturn Ringers, the Milky Wayfarers taking on the Vulcan Mind-Melders, the Pole Star Stars against the Planet of the Apes, the ..."

News Flash: All space sports plans were suspended when European scientists discovered that they were trying to land on the same comet that NASA is trying to blow a hole in. A multi-trillion dollar laser space war may be imminent.