To Exploit Strange New Worlds

Those fine entrepreneurial folk at British Petroleum have made a deal with NASA to pool their experience of working in hostile environments. While it is true that no other planet in the solar system is noticeably pullulating with obliging taxpayers or compliant governments, BP apparently has hopes that its drilling abilities may enable the discovery of extraterrestrial water, which can then be imported to Earth as a profitable substitute for what BP and its fellow entrepreneurs have polluted. The enterprise may also be able to seek out any life that exists beneath the surface of Mars, while laying the foundations, in due course, and with appropriate rewards to the deserving, for unspecified yet indispensable advances in "hydrogen, regenerative fuel cells, high-capacity batteries, solar power systems, small-scale nuclear power systems." As always, BP executives also hope to supplement such greenwashed aspirations with drilling for fossil fuels on Earth, thereby bringing the terrestrial environment conveniently closer to those of Mars and the moon.