The next great leap for mankind

From The Onion. And it will be true if we allow Americans to settle up there.

NASA: "We will have a mass shooting on the moon by 2055."

WASHINGTON—Calling it the next great milestone in mankind’s journey into outer space, NASA officials boldly declared in a press conference Friday that a mass shooting would occur on the moon no later than 2055.

The panel of NASA administrators and scientists said that, given the current rate of progress in research and development, the space agency was on track to place a deranged gun-toting madman on the moon by the middle of this century, with officials expressing confidence that a double-digit body count on the lunar surface would be a reality within the majority of Americans’ lifetimes.

“While such a feat may have seemed inconceivable just 10 years ago, it is our belief that a cold-blooded shooting rampage on the moon is no longer a fantasy,” said administrator Charles Bolden from NASA’s headquarters, unveiling the agency’s four-decade plan to construct a lunar colony capable of sustaining a human society against which a lone gunman would feel a psychotic compulsion to lash out. “Indeed, with enough funding, ingenuity, and America’s pioneering spirit, we can ensure that a shocking act of unspeakable horror will claim the lives of dozens of innocent, unsuspecting lunar colonists by 2055.”

“So when you look upon the moon at night, do so with the knowledge that one day in the not too distant future a man will walk out upon the lunar surface and take those first unforgettable gunshots at his fellow residents and thereby shatter the innocence of an entire moon colony forever,” Bolden continued. “I can assure you that it is not a matter of if, but when.”

According to Bolden, by 2045 NASA plans to begin sending residents to inhabit pressurized lunar housing pods on the Mare Tranquillitatis and the Ptolemaeus crater. By 2047, Bolden said, the colony’s paranoid and unhinged members should begin stewing over their perceived persecution, authoring barely comprehensible manifestos, and amassing massive stockpiles of ammunition.