Considering the number of space cadets currently roaming around the corridors of power in this country, it is clear we can now rely on our own manpower to launch Nepal's new inter-planetary exploration program to grab a slice of the moon and a handful of rocks from the Asteroid Belt since they are currently available on a first-come-first-serve basis.

After all, as a country that has never been under any foreign yoke in known history, we can't afford to be left behind in the space race among the international fraternity of nations to colonise the cosmos. NASA has just been instructed by President Bush, before this decade is out, to send man to a permanent Mars Spacedrome equipped with duty free shopping, a McDonalds, a Multiplex and a fully-licensed Mars Bar and return him safely to Earth. Frequent fliers can therefore earn space miles taking roundtrip flights to Mars with a stopover on the Moon so they can get a freebie to Doha and back for their spouses. Not to be outdone, the Europeans want to be on Mars too but with a robot named Mr Bean, which unlike a manned probe, can be left behind on the surface of the Red Planet to colonise it with Earthlings.

In our immediate vicinity, China recently launched a manned Great Leap Forward rocket putting the first ever Peoples' Liberation Army Colonel into orbit, completely bypassing the tradition in the aerospace industry to send a hamster up first. The next step will be to launch an Even Greater Leap Forward rocket so that the entire population of Guangzhou can attain escape velocity thereby reducing demographic pressure on the eastern seaboard.

Understandably, this has prompted India to announce its own manned moon probe which is facing delays because its first batch of lunatic trainees are stuck in Delhi due to fog. India's lunar mission is the most important achievement since the construction of the Jantar Mantar, and will cleverly use the country's ICBMs as a launch vehicle and replace its five kiloton warhead with a department head. Ancient astrological formulae may have to be recalculated since the presence on the moon's surface of a space capsule the size and weight of an Ambassador sedan is going to ever so imperceptibly change the orbital trajectory of the moon around the Earth and make us all go slightly bonkers in our part of the world.

With such technological leaps and bounds taking place, there is a real danger that we in Nepal are going to be left behind. It is time to stop paying just lip service to our space program, and start giving it a tongue lashing. It is time we went boldly forth where no Nepali has been before-into the limitless void of space. We have a head start, since a part of our territory (the summit of Mt Everest) already sticks out into space. As a nation, we also have a great deal of experience in wandering around aimlessly and even have a domestic airline called Cosmic Air which has already applied for an interstellar service license.

In this way it won't be long before we will be able to traverse the treacherous Hemmorrhoid Belt to liberate the Red Planet from the forces of global imperialism and claim it for the glory of the revolution.