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You know when you live with someone and they ask if one of their old schoolmates can stay at your house this weekend, and you say "yeah" immediately, because in your head you're already spooning someone at least three rungs above you on the pretty ladder who'll leave you in peace to go look at Buckingham Palace in the morning? And then she turns up with her square face trying to talk to you about why she's been studying mud and Jack Johnson, and you're a child so you spend all night sulking and trying to start fights that avoiding conversation has made you far too drunk to win.
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If you've ever had a girlfriend you'll know this guy, because he was her dad. He's also the least qualified member on this team, but in Hollywood terms that just means he's the one with the most to prove who'll inevitably drag the mission back up by the scruff of its neck once the eggheads all start flaking out and throwing bad, open fist punches at each other. From what I can gather, he's also the only one on the team who looks for proper life in space rather than just traces of carbon or water, which, again, in Hollywood parlance means he's basically Bruce Willis in that film where he saved the world so that Ashton Kutcher could fuck his ex-wife and steal his children.

According to the NASA press release, this guy's main credential is the fact he's a "distinguished fellow," which seemed promising at first, but I just googled it and it turns out it's some honorary title given to him by HIS OWN COMPANY. I was about to write him off as just another self-congratulating boffin with no earth-saving skills, but then I saw this on his Wikipedia page:
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