holy shuttle launch, Batman!

Over on Pharyngula, reader aab points us to this article, wherein Bruce D. Callander of the Cheboygan Tribune blames NASA for bad weather. Read it to believe it.

A small sample:

If it takes that much power to raise a rocket, then according to Newton, the same amount of force is being exerted on the earth. Considering the earth's bulk, one lift-off may not have much effect, but think how many launches there are from Cape Kennedy every year and assume that each launch pushes the planet a few feet out of its normal orbit. In the course of a decade, that could amount to a major displacement, enough to have a major effect on the earth's climate.

To test the theory about landing on other planets, the only thing to do is to stop sending out those probes until we see if the weather returns to normal. If it doesn't, the problem probably is the launches themselves.

In this case, we can resume launching but set off a corresponding explosion on the other side of the world each time we fire one from Florida. Bangkok looks like about the best place to do it.

There is so much wrong with Callander's thinking, it's hard to know where to begin. First, he has no (zero, zip, zilch, etc.) data. How much force does an individual launch exert? How much of that force is absorbed by the earth's crust (which, by the way, "floats" atop magma)? How much force is required to knock an earth-sized planet off its usual orbit? If launches have already thrown Earth off, why would stopping them return the weather to normal? What about the effects of European and Chinese space programs?

Callander also makes the (laughable) assumption that since we always fire rockets in Florida, then setting off an equal number from Jakarta would blast us back the right way. He seems to forget a tiny, but crucial, fact: the earth not only rotates, but revolves, so each blast, if it has any measurable effect, would push the globe in a different direction relative to the sun.

I'm sure competent physicists are already debunking Callander's tripe. Or maybe they haven't yet stopped snorting their protractors in fits of uproarious laughter.

Update: The op-ed is too funny to be true. I received an email from the editor of the Tribune, who writes, "Mr. Callendar [sic] writes satire. This was satire." Too bad the robots at Google News can't figure that out, posting it in the Sci-Tech section.

It reminds me of the time I spoke at the Evergreen State College commencement, back in 2002. I gave a funny speech patched together from a letters-to-the-editor war in The Olympian. I got booed at several points, until I pointedly reminded the audience that "for those of you just joining us, this is satire." The best is obvious only in retrospect. Kudos to the Cheboygan Tribune.