Personal Space

The evolutionary trend that brought us personal radios, then mobile phones, then computers now extends into orbit. For at least $8,000, Interorbital Systems now gives you the chance to launch a TubeSat -- your own personal satellite -- with communications strong enough to be picked up on the ground using a typical ham radio.

One suggested application is a private ham radio repeater in space. But their website offers many more possibilities:

▼ Earth-from-space video imaging
▼ Earth magnetic field measurement
▼ Satellite orientation detection (horizon sensor, gyros, accelerometers, etc.)
▼ Orbital environment measurements (temperature, pressure, radiation, etc.)
▼ On-orbit hardware and software component testing (microprocessors, etc.)
▼ Tracking migratory animals from orbit
▼ Testing satellite stabilization methods
▼ Biological experiments
▼ On-orbit advertising
▼ Private e-mail

Sorry, nothing on the list mentioning exes or in-laws. Besides, any devious deed you could do would be short term. Each TubeSat only lasts a few weeks before the orbit of its carrier vehicle decays to the point where it burns up in the atmosphere, hopefully leaving no (additional) space junk. You gotta admit though, it would be a creative way of jettisoning some things we'd all like to forget.

Well, the folks at your Lightning Round (yes they're still around -- if the Tucson Citizen can survive in some form, so can they) took an office poll and came up with these suggestions for terminal launch, things we'd like to remove from Earth, never to return:

• Any proposal to build another baseball training facility in Tucson. That "build it and they will come" philosophy works only in the movies.


• All those rumors about President Obama's birth certificate.


• High heels longer than two inches. Ladies, I know for you they look beautiful. For me they look painful. Remember in Romancing the Stone when Michael Douglas' character chopped down a pair of stilettos? "Those were Italian!" "Now they're practical."


• Microsoft Windows Vista


• Airline fees for: baggage, extra baggage, overweight baggage, overweight passengers, fuel and so forth. Just admit you're hurting for cash, already.


• Any stock derivative that needs a Ph.D. to understand


• Subprime loans


• Payday loans


• That 25 bucks Leroy in the Marketing department claims I still owe him


• Piercing of anything besides ear lobes


• Fat. Need we elaborate?


• The Bachelor. Calm down. We mean the show, not the person.


• Methamphetamines. Wait a minute -- we want the satellite to fall, not go higher.