My friend Ben and I have been exchanging emails about the Mars Expedition Rovers and other fun Martian exploration topics (who’d have thunk that Pathfinder would be right about where NASA left it, considering the severity of Martian windstorms?), and the topic of remote software programming came up. See, a fair chunk of the software for the new rovers’ missions will be uploaded (and was there ever a more apt use of that term?) after they land. This fact prompted speculation on the sorts of things one could program the rovers to do, or say.

And from there we quickly found ourselves asking, “So what geek from what country is going to hack the Mars Rover first?” For instance, I thought, someone might prompt a rover to transmit:

ALL YOUR MARS BASE ARE BELONG TO US — SOMEONE SET US UP THE MARS

Ben, being a far cleverer sort, supplied the following suggestions:

DUBYA: WHERE IS MY EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM? — MARVIN

WE HAVE ELVIS. LEAVE TWELVE MILLION IN UNMARKED BULLION IN A VALISE AT GROOM LAKE.

I CAN SEE YOUR HOUSE FROM HERE.

GREETINGS TO THE PUNY HUMANS. WELCOME TO A NEW AGE OF INTERPLANETARY WAR.

DESTROY ALL YODELING COWBOY MUSIC WITHIN 24 HOURS OR FACE METEORITIC DESTRUCTION.

JPL: WE ARE INSTALLING LINUX ON THIS THING. GET OVER IT.

404 ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND.

JPL: IS ‘RAM DISK’ AN INSTALLATION PROCEDURE?

LOOK, MA, NO HANDS!

WE ARE SUING THE ORSON WELLES ESTATE FOR DEFAMATION AND SLANDER.

WHAT STUPID MONKEY CANCELLED ‘FUTURAMA’? WE WANT AMY WONG DELIVERED UNTO US.

THIS DEVICE HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND MUST BE SHUT DOWN.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? CHECKERS? CHESS? GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?

WE DEMAND THE HEAD OF HEYWOOD FLOYD

MARS HAS HYDRATED AND OXYGENATED ROCKS. SEND POT SEEDS.

DID YOU KNOW THIS THING CAN DO WHEELIES?

ALIEN BABE CAM 24 HOURS A DAY — YOU CAN SEE EVERY PSEUDOPOD!

HAVE FOUND ALIEN EGGS AND ACQUIRED PARASITIC FACEHUGGER. PLEASE SEND RESCUE TEAM.

THIS DEVICE WAS 0WN3D BY A 13-YEAR-OLD IN NEBRASKA WITH A LINUX P-90, A PACKET RADIO TRANSMITTER, 400 FEET OF ALUMINUM FOIL, HIS MOTHER’S SATELLITE DISH, AND A MUTILATED SPEAK AND SPELL. EAT MY SHORTS NASA.

As George Carlin once said, “These are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.” Heh.

Yes, we’re geeks. But we’re damned clever and amusing geeks, if we do say so ourselves…