For $150 billion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could have sent astronauts back to the Moon. The Obama administration judged that too expensive, and in September, Congress agreed to cancel the program.

For a fraction of that — less than $200 million, along with about $250 million for a rocket — NASA engineers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston say they can safely send a humanoid robot to the Moon. And they say they could accomplish that in a thousand days…

Despite the sophistication of the project, the robot’s capabilities would be slight compared with what a human could do on the lunar surface. Project M was conceived as a technology demonstration, not a scientific mission.

One of the main tasks envisioned for the robot would be to simply pick up a rock and drop it, as part of an education program broadcast to schools. Students could do the same and compare the relative gravity of Earth.

– Kenneth Chang, N.Y. Times.

I want to make this clear: I’m 100% on board with the idea of sending humanoid robots into space, especially if they look like C3PO, as the Times’ rendering does.

But it’s downright pathetic that we can’t get actual humans back to the moon at a less-than-prohibitive cost. We sent people to the moon in 1969! Before personal computers and CDs and the Internet and Segways.

I was told there’d be moon colonies by now; I thought that was what the Biosphere was about. Ridiculous.

Now we’re reduced to sending robots to the moon so they can pick up a rock and drop it. It’s embarrassing for us and it’s embarrassing for the robots. The Terminator would be humiliated if he lived to see this.

Originally published May 13, 2010.

OK, so I chew stuff sometimes. Usually it’s a pen or a straw, but any small plastic object will do. It’s hardly a chronic habit, but I’d say about once a day I stumble upon something that appears chewable, and next thing I know I’m chomping away for about a half hour.

I realize it’s kind of gross, and Freud might have a field day with it. But I maintain that it’s not the jamming things in my mouth that I enjoy so much as the sensation of chewing itself. For some reason, I enjoy the feeling of working my jaw muscles.

For about 20 years, nearly every woman in my life has nagged me to quit the habit, insisting I’ll someday choke. My mom, my sister, various teachers, and now my wife.

Last night, while walking home from the train station, I started chewing the cap of a Poland Spring bottle. No idea why; it wasn’t something I did consciously. It rarely is. Next thing I knew — and this has never happened before — I swallowed the thing.

I didn’t choke, thankfully. I had chewed the cap into something akin to a football shape, and I guess that ergonomically tailored it to slide right down my throat. But though I could breathe and I wasn’t in any pain, I had a bottle cap inside me, so my wife convinced me I should probably go to the hospital.

I spent most of my next 10 waking hours being shuffled around the emergency room. By my count, all the consulting and poking and attempts at extracting the thing required eight nurses and five doctors. And every single one reminded me how stupid it is to stick plastic objects in my mouth, and told me that my mouth should only be for edible things.

Thanks. Because, you know, I thought I was supposed to swallow bottle caps, and I’m not humiliated enough without your help. It was the medical equivalent of booing David Wright after he slams his helmet down in frustration; they were just reinforcing an emotion I already came to on my own.

Anyway, apparently they would normally just let something like that pass through the system, but because I’m special for a variety of reasons, they gave me an endoscopy this morning to try to fish that sucker out. They couldn’t, and so now I have to hope it leaves my body via, ahh, more traditional means. Sorry for the imagery.

The best and most ridiculous part of the whole thing was the aftercare print-out from the hospital. Turns out the standard form for “swallowed foreign objects” is addressed to the parents of an infant or small child, and describes how it’s somewhat normal for children under the age of 5 to swallow parts of toys and small household items. Nothing in there about 29-year-olds doing the same thing.

I called my parents and read it to them. They had a good laugh, but they were unwilling to follow the suggested procedure for monitoring when it exits.

My mom, doing her mom thing, used the incident to argue that I should stop chewing on plastic stuff. I recognize she’s probably right, but from a statistical standpoint, she doesn’t have a very strong argument. I’ve probably chewed some 10,000 small plastic objects in my life, and never swallowed one before. What’re the odds it happens again?

I guess it only takes one time when I’m not as lucky, though. I should probably invest in some gum.

I’m taking the day off work and heading out of town, and in all the excitement about Sandy Alderson I neglected to line up anyone for guest posts.

So in lieu of that, I’m going to roll out some past posts that I liked or you seemed to like or people told me they liked. Reruns, if you will.

I realize this is a particularly narcissistic thing to do, but hey, the site’s called TedQuarters. Fueled by narcissism.

Also, I hate to grovel, but if you want to use this opportunity to tell your friends, loved ones, and everyone you meet about this site, that’d be cool.

Obviously I appreciate all the readers that make their way here now, but the more traffic I get, the more opportunities I’ll have to do stuff to benefit this site. And considering the narcissism and everything, I’m a pretty terrible self-promoter. So if you want to help out with that, you know, sweet.

In either case, enjoy some posts you may have missed from the first year of TedQuarters. Sandwich of the Week will come as scheduled tomorrow and I’ll be back on Monday.