Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic presents a proposal for a new space agency that is explicitly designed to appeal to misanthropic motivations rather than noble ones. The presenter argues that NASA is "not hateful enough" and that existing space programs are motivated by curiosity and exploration. Instead, the new agency — MASTA — will be designed to appeal to spite and contempt. Its programs include: designing and launching weapons explicitly to "screw up" anything "hoping to explore" in the future; landing nuclear-powered heaters on every comet in the solar system; drilling ten-kilometer screws into planetary surfaces to "mess up" the geology; and staffing the agency with people who post "reliably obnoxious technical explanations of rocket science online." The person being pitched asks if this is really about giving cover to misanthropic tendencies, and the presenter says he would explain further but "you're too dumb to understand."

The Humor

The comic satirizes the intersection of scientific enthusiasm and condescension. The proposal takes the implicit elitism and misanthropy that sometimes lurks in scientific communities and makes it the explicit mission statement. Each proposed program is a darkly funny inversion of actual space exploration goals — instead of studying geology, they drill screws into planets to ruin the geology; instead of studying comets, they melt them out of spite. The staffing criterion — finding people who are obnoxiously condescending about rocket science online — is a jab at the "well actually" culture in online science communities. The final line, where the presenter insults the listener's intelligence, proves the point that the whole endeavor is really just a vehicle for contempt.

References

The comic references NASA and parodies real space agency programs. The name MASTA appears to be a play on NASA. The mention of landing on comets may allude to the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission and its Philae lander, which landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.