Gravity whack.

One and a half G's. Holding steady. Watch that panel, Mitch. Watch it... watch it.... Two G's. Two and a half. Fuel consumption ratio rising. Damn it, Mitch - the panel, man... keep watching!

Oh, hi, reader(s). What's up? Not so much, what's up with you? Yep, just another one of those days. You've had 'em. Piling all your gear into a space ship, strapping the man-sized tuber into his humidity controlled terrarium, pumping the tank full of highly-explosive fuel, and then hurtling headlong into space... all this before it dawns on you that you need a qualified pilot. Oh, sure... I know we have our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee. Big Green relies on him for just about everything these days... even things that he can't, well.... do very well... like piloting a spacecraft. What the fuck - we've used him before. But I swear to you, five minutes after we clear the gantry, Mitch turns to me and says, "Okay, so you're taking it from here, right?" And I'm like, WHAT? And he's like, "OH, YEAH!" And I'm like....

Oh, hell... I'm like nothing. And when it comes to flying spacecraft, I got nothing. So don't even ask how the rest of our ascent went... don't even ask. It was shaky, it was blistering, it was loud, mega-loud. Couldn't even hear myself sweat. We topped out at eleven G's.... that's a lot of gravity, kids. That's like having all of your Facebook friends stand on your sternum at the same time (and I mean all your friends, not all mine... who, while they may have greater average mass, number far less than yours). After moments of being paper-thin (a new experience for most of us), that's when the turbulence began. My trajectory was a bit shallow, I'm told, and even worse, there were asteroids all around us. Big, mean looking asteroids, like an interplanetary motorcycle gang, gunning their engines as if to tell us, if you steer that ship.... that achy breaky ship... it might blow up and kill this band.

Now, it's one thing to have your life threatened in low Earth orbit. It's quite another to be taunted with Billy Ray Cyrus lyrics. We all have our limit, and I reached it at that moment. I grabbed the controls and yanked them wildly from side to side, determined to sell our lives dearly in the face of this menace. Nothing happened. I yanked them wildly another time. Still nothing. Dumbfounded, I turned to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), whose metallic features are, well, permanently indicative of dumbfoundedness.... so I turned to my other companions. Apparently they had rigged up some phony controls for my amusement; a "Captain Peachfuzz" bridge, as it were, with pilot controls connected to nothing. (Well, actually, I think they ran the blender and the microwave down in the galley, because dinner was waiting for us when we went below.)

There's a vote of confidence for you. And a decidedly reality based one, as well. What's next? A keyboard that's midi'd into a toaster? We'll see on Jupiter.