3…………….2……………1……………...LIFTOFF!!! With a bang the rocket was up and out of sight in less than a second. The enormous power of nuclear energy is unleashed as the rocket streaks into the sky reaching speeds over 70,000 miles per hour. That’s a hundred times faster than a passenger jet liner! Just half as fast as light and light is the fastest thing known to man. How could a possibly human survive the G forces? Well…..a human couldn’t. It’s unlikely that any living creature could in fact. The test flight of this revolutionary technology was so dangerous, that no body could be within a 100 miles to witness the spectacular event. That didn’t matter, because anyone who was within 10,000 of the launch site could see the bright streak of light reaching from the ground to the sky like a bolt of lightning. The sonic thrusters on the rocket created an enormous shockwave that traveled for hundreds of miles, changing the wind’s direction and tripling its speed. Such power was hard to control. Man had just begun to use its power with the nuclear bomb; even then there wasn’t total control. Any living organism within a ten mile radius of the launch site was immediately vaporized by the shockwave. Even cockroaches couldn’t take the hit.
News about the new technology spread around the world almost as fast as the nuclear shockwave (which traveled about 7,000 miles before reducing itself to just a breeze.) Some of the people living in remote areas that had no access to news thought it was a sign of the apocalypse and started jumping off buildings and bridges. Nearly a million suicides that day could be blamed on the launch of the nuclear powered rocket. It took days for the world to calm down but when everyone was finally satisfied with the information they had, NASA released more information saying that more breakthroughs had made an expedition to Mars now possible.

Fresh out of college, Matthew was ready for a new challenge. He had completed college with higher than a four point zero grade point average while training in the air force. He was quite accomplished. He had always had a career in NASA in mind when he had been in college. So, when he learned about the Mars exploration team on TV, he knew this was what he was destined for. He immediately sent in an application with a resume to NASA on the internet. Now, all Matt could do was wait. Not really. Matt was used to tireless nights of studying, so he couldn’t just sit and do nothing. He went online to learn what he could about Mars, and to his surprise he found a lot. But the information he found frustrated him. People claimed that life could have once existed on Mars. The reason why this frustrated Matt was because he believed it was possible for life to exist on any planet. Life could adapt to any planet’s climate, given enough time. Everyone just assumes that all of the laws of life on earth apply to everything in the universe. Maybe there are creatures living way out there that don’t need water to survive. Maybe there is a creature that could survive just from the radiation from a planet or star. There are unlimited “what ifs” that people could come up with.
Weeks later, Matt was sent a notice explaining that he had been chosen to be exploration team, and was to start training immediately. Filled with excitement and anticipation, he hurried to the airport where he could ride a private jet liner right to the NASA headquarters. As Matthew finally stepped off the top of the line 857 jet liner, everything suddenly slammed into him at once. This moment was what he had been working up to his whole life. This was even more than he had expected would happen after all those tireless nights pouring over books and papers, struggling to maintain his impossibly high grades. Then finally finishing college with a gpa higher than a four point. He stood in the middle of the NASA runway soaking in the satisfaction of a long, successful life ahead of him.