She's big and famous and curvaceous and no one can wait to touch her. You could get lost in her. Entire nations are lining up to have their turn at her, and if you haven't already been in her, then you ain't shit. She's the Ultimate Ride. She's the giant ball-pit all the big children of the world can't wait to dive into. She's Alyssa Milano. She's Paris Hilton.

The auroras are sparks underneath the spikes of the highest of high heels. She uses the Van Allen Belt as a garter for her fish-net stockings. Further up it's just ... tempting darkness. But we can see her enormous charms dangling. HYOOJ tracts of land. Just sayin'. We've paid Edwin "Paparazzi" Hubble and his friends how much money just to take pictures?

Liftoff is the expensive dinner. A few romantic laps in orbit is the show, and first base is the motherfuckin' moon. The Moon.

It seems far away, but it isn't. Hell, the car I drive has gone more than a whole light-second. That's halfway there -- and on only 11,000 gallons of gasoline. About $60,000 at current prices and eight years or so behind the wheel will get you there if you drive non-stop. Assuming there are twenty-some-odd thousand gallons of gasoline left on Earth. But anyway.

To the Moon in eight years on under a hundred thousand dollars? What third-world nation on earth wouldn't jump at that package for a space program timeline and budget? (Cf. space researcher/theorist Michael Nesmith's white paper, "El Dorado to the Moon".)

Hey, Nigeria: I'll loan you my busted-ass Caddy if you'll help me get 3.8 MILLION DOLLIARS out of the country.

But what's the use? People are giving this giant space-whore billions of dollars (and euros and yen and pounds and rupees and yan and ... whatever unit of currency the Nigerians are using this year) every year, and she just burns the money and lets the ashes rain on down. But hey, I live in America, where we find that sort of thing extraordinarily arousing.

And I can't wait for a shot at her myself.

What is the charm? Seriously. You sit in a gym-locker-smelling, horribly cramped submarine that goes up instead of down. You look out the window. There are very few fish. Maybe you throw up. You repair televisions. You come back ... nine times out of ten. I can get all that at work.

Why do I want to sign up for the online classes for TV repair I see advertised on late-night cable just so I can have a chance to take the ride? Do I have a congenital addiction to exposure to cosmic rays? Am I that hot for a night in the Cosmic Hilton?

Nah.

Anything we've already spent BILLIONS OF DOLLIARS on has to be worthwhile, right? And look at all the beautiful postcards Mr. Hubble has sent back!

Why space instead of the ocean? Two reasons. One, space is prettier. Check me on this. Which is better:

This ... [click click click] ... or this?

This ... [click click] ... or this?

This ... [click] ... or this?

Not that you'll see anything like the pictures Mr. Hubble takes when you're up there, but you might get a glimpse. For that matter the fish are hard to spot too.

Second, space is easier. No kidding. Think back to the submarine for a second. It doesn't take as much fuel to get to the ocean (it's only a five-hour drive to get there from Atlanta, for instance, rather than an eight-year drive), but the tin can you sit in when you get there has to be much sturdier. In space, the difference in atmospheric pressure between the inside and outside is about one atmosphere, or actually closer to half that. In the ocean, if you want to see the bottom, the difference between inside and outside is about a thousand atmospheres. No exaggeration.

Okay, three reasons. Culturally speaking, Heaven is up and Hell is down. Even among science-minded atheists, this counts more than you would think. Also, the ocean is where we dump all our shit. I lump this in with the last because Hell is where God dumps all of His shit. Basically the same thing.

So really. Why the hell do I want to go? Is it to get away from you guys? To get away from the riff-raff? So I can be a member of a not-so-exclusive club of "Hilton's boyfriends?" Am I that much of a fuckin' tourist? Do I dream of living in a colony in space or on another planet?

Can't be that. The dreams of a space opera Lunar Democracy are laughable. When you live in a terrarium, discipline is everything. Shit in the wrong place and you could poison everyone. A casually thrown coffee mug could let in all the vacuum that you've been working so hard to keep out. Also, in a couple of months you'll have fucked everyone who will ever be willing -- if the macho alpha males who end up in charge would ever allow such a thing -- and then the real drama begins. It's a combination Real World/Surreal Life/Survivor episode with no chance at the talk show circuit and no consolation prizes if you get voted out. It's too expensive to mail your ass back home to mommy if you wuss out or annoy too many people. The only answer is Hammurabi's Code, with Hammurabi himself to back it up.

I'm not so good with authority figures. I'd have had more fun on the Nuwaubian compound during its heyday. [Warning: previous link contains hysterical alternate etymologies to common words. Make sure you make it back to finish this article, which, suddenly, is no longer funny in comparison.]

So here's the punchline. Here's the whole attraction. Historically, the extremely wealthy people of every society have participated in constructing, at hilarious expense, some monstrosity of architecture or landscaping or some other extravagance instead of using the money to feed ungrateful and disposable poor people, often using disposable poor people. We have Neolithic monuments, pyramids of all shapes and sizes, castles, cathedrals, coliseums, museums, and all kinds of other enormous and enormously expensive items of cultural enrichment. These things have always been seen as more important than charity and improving the educational system. Whatever. So be it. I'm half-convinced that's all okay.

I just want to be able to think that all this money and lives and effort that has been spent developing the space program has been spent, at least in part, on me.

Oh, and maybe that "riff-raff" thing.