Whispers at NASA

Since the shuttle no longer makes ‘round-the-Earth flights,
it behooved those at NASA to reach for new heights.
And those heights are achieved with Cern gravity waves:
“I'm amazed at the way our new booster behaves!”

Such a typical comment is grist for the press
since those gravity waves make the weight so much less.
At the Hadron Collider those waves came to be,
which enabled the space program new destiny.

It began long ago when old Newton of yore
applied math and mechanics that opened the door.
It’s inertia and mass to be pushed all the way,
by the basic equation, F=ma.

But with gravity waves, NASA lessens the load,
and now space exploration is on a new road.
For with mass so controlled there is minimal weight,
and the saving of energy is very great.

So instead of huge roars of ignition that’s rough,
many shuttle-like payloads are launched with a puff.
And in fact the last launch was a smooth as can get,
with the use of an engine from a Boeing jet.

Thus, an effort is whisper at NASA of new;
it is much easier to soar into the blue.
(Yet of course going high enough, blue becomes black;
  a much gentler NASA is glad to be back.)

In the day JFK set the sights on the moon--
many rockets were thirsty and played to that tune.
Even rovers now sample the soil on Mars,
but with gravity waves we now reach for the stars.*

Anapestic Tetrameter  (28 Lines)

* Metaphorically of course.  The gravity waves address the problem of weight (which is a function of gravity),
and the object's mass. The vast distances between the stars remain problematical, yet hope springs eternal.

F=ma: Newton's second law of motion describes the relationship between an object's mass and the amount of force
needed to accelerate it. Newton's second law is often stated as F=ma, which means the force (F) acting on an object
is equal to the mass (m) of an object times its acceleration (a).