NASA Report: "While US Remains Fixated on Global Domination, Several Planets and Moons Within Own Solar System Await Claimants of Bountiful Water, Gas Resources"
Presentation Perks Ears When Interplanetary Pipeline Proposed

The "hook, line, and sinker" slide from NASA's presentation at the White House depicts the proposed "Jupiter Pipeline", which in effect would actually function like a giant bendy-straw, sucking natural gas directly from the planet Jupiter. According to the report, the gas giant has "nearly 1.899 octillion kilograms of proven hydrogen and helium reserves." Upon revealing that statistic, Cheney's regrouped Energy Task Force reacted by wetting their pants, and the pants of others gathered for the meeting.

8/3/03 - NASA found itself on the fast track to securing a whopping 30000% increase in its' annual budget following a meeting with top Washington officials at the White House this past Friday.

But the projects NASA proposed as being "within a one-year horizon" are being called "completely impossible" by what some call "dozens of the most respected scientists on the planet."

NASA was available for comment.

"We had to secure badly-needed funding for legitimate scientific and exploratory programs by marketing illegitimate, outlandish 'initiatives' that spoke in terms the Bush Administration could understand, namely, 'securitization of the majority of the solar system's natural resources for America,'" an anonymous NASA administrator explains.

Their plan got off to a rocky start, as talk about Europa's plentiful water resources, Titan's potential habitability for humans, and the possibility of mining minerals from several planets and moons were all met with polite disinterest. But it was the prospect of harvesting the natural gases that compose the four outer planets that made the wealth-by-energy-industry contingent we call "The Government" suddenly perk up and get moist.

Technically, a pipeline stretching from Earth to Jupiter, as was shown in the presentation, is impossible. But, regardless of feasibility, simply the idea of laying claim to Jupiter's 1,898,700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of gas reserves gave NASA management the ability to quickly convince Bush and his team to defer trillions of taxpayer dollars to the effort, thanks mainly in part to Powerpoint 97.

Unnamed sources said the Powerpoint presentation was very spiffy indeed. It was said to contain over eleven colorful slides, and included animation effects and slide transitions that "pleased" the President and his Cabinet. The presentation also included a vast array of humorous and timely sound effects, such as bleeps, boings, and screeching car tires, many of which "made the President coo, and brim with glee", but caused the Vice President to nervously check and recheck his numerous life-support systems. One instance of a "Pac-Man dying" sound had Cheney in such a panic "[that] he shot up from his chair and [within moments] had his team of cardiologists barrelling into the conference room [with machinery in tow].

As for the actual content of the presentation, it leaned heavily towards the side of science fiction rather than science. Leaning heavily towards one side seems to be the only means of getting this Administration's attention, so long as it's done 'right'.